So Down, Any Career Advice?

Published Aug 27, 2012

77 Posts

Hi All,Here I am again. I've been a licensed RN, BScN here in Canada for a little over a year. My first job right after graduation was an 8 month stint in a small medical/surgical unit, dangerously understaffed with no support workers and a large psychogeriatric patient population, with an overwhelming lack of tools in place to deal with frequent wanderers, I was completely and utterly miserable at that job and decided to quit. I enjoyed working with patients, but it was so task focused and frantically rushed, I didn't feel as though I was really practicing nursing.For about 6 months now I've been a psychiatric inpatient RN. Overall, this has been a much better experience and less stressful work environment for me, however it is a team nursing model there, and me managing other nurses as charge nurse is really tedious at best, and a down right legal and professional hazard (not to mention stressful) at worst. So, here I am again. I graduated in the top 10'% of my BScN graduating class, and I have many people willing to give me references for grad school, only problem is, I am totally uncertain on which Master degree to apply for. I do enjoy public health and particularly HIV research and policy development. In Canada, there isn't an HIV nurse practitioner speciality, and these clinic level RN positions are very difficult to get. Besides, I am pretty sure I want to leave direct patient care. If I stayed, HIV specialization would be my only area of interest, as I know a great deal about HIV and it interests me. I am not living with HIV if anyone was wondering.Anybody have any suggestions? I was thinking of M.Sc in Epidemiology or MPH, but again as I understand the labour market in Canada at this time, these choices could leave me with little more than a very big student loan?