Telephonic Nursing

grownuprosie · Mar 8, 2011

Have you looked into working at doctors offices? Many clinics will hire an RN with a few years of clinical experience to triage calls for their docs as they come in or do minor procedures in the office. These jobs might be hard to find becasue of how convenient they are(no heavy lifting and weekends off!), but they are out there.

ValDonovan · Mar 9, 2011

Have you thought of EMD 911 dispatching?? Emergency Medical Dispatch on 911.

ObtundedRN, BSN, RN · Mar 9, 2011

Have you thought of EMD 911 dispatching?? Emergency Medical Dispatch on 911.

That would be a pay cut and waste of skills. EMDs don't get to use much medical knowledge. Just ask questions, and depending on the answers it could impact the response priority of the call.

jeffsher · Mar 9, 2011

Have you looked into working at doctors offices? Many clinics will hire an RN with a few years of clinical experience to triage calls for their docs as they come in or do minor procedures in the office. These jobs might be hard to find becasue of how convenient they are(no heavy lifting and weekends off!), but they are out there.

I just left a job after 17 years in a primary care clinic where I did mostly phone triage. The docs love having a good triage nurse; it takes a lot of work off of them.

I leveraged that experience and am now a Case Management nurse (it was a job transfer) for a HMO, and I love it! I mainly deal with Heart Failure and COPD patients, although there are also a lot of other co morbid conditions these people have. The goal is to keep the patients stable, catch problems before they turn into much bigger problems. It helps the patient by keeping them out of the hospital, and helps the insurance company by saving big hospital and ED bills. This is where Medicare is going-reimbursement will become very tight, so most hospitals will need to go the route of having CM's.

nursekimbo · Mar 15, 2011

well i did telephonic nursing for a year and ahalf and it wasnt for me. i'd say it depends on which department you work in, and you may have to move around a little bit before you find what works for you. I worked in 'disease management', which on the face of it is a great idea, however, in the end, it's just an insurance company, being an insurance company. what i mean by that is my stats (how many calls i made per day, how long i was on the phone with each person, my cumulative time on the phone, and how many boxes i checked on the assessment tool, how much $ they could save) were more important to them than me really helping the participant. Also with the program structure/model we ended up being a nuisance and hung up on by a lot of people rather than concentrating on the ones that wanted to participat. I ended up being started on bp meds while i was there bc of stress and found it demoralizing because i felt like i wasnt allowed to assist the whole person (the supposed goal of the program), i had to work within the 5 core diseases, 7 secondary conditions that the program dealt with only, ie: i had a participant tell me about a bladder cancer dx and did education on it but i did not get as much credit for the call bc it wasnt one of the conditions listed. i didnt feel like my nursing skills were really being utilized- it's a call center and the micromanagement was absolutely crazymaking. with that being said, i think that the 24 hour nurseline (triage) would have been a good department to work in and i have a coworker that was on my team who moved over to case management and she likes it a lot better than DM. try it and see how you like it, again you can always move around until you find the right fit.