Tips on becoming a Maternal/Child, Women's Health PHN?

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Hi! I am a new RN with a bachelors in Public Health and Nursing and ever since helping out at a crisis pregnancy center/maternity home have had a passion for serving the women/maternal/children in the community.  I have heard of some nurses that go visit pregnant/post-partum women and provide education/support as well as some that work in clinics. Would love to hear from others' experience on how they got to their position and how it's been going for them. 

Also I'm in CA and currently awaiting for my public health nurse certification to be processed. Any advice as to what I can be doing in the meantime to be preparing or making myself a stronger candidate? 

Thank you so much for your time! I really appreciate any advice that you guys may have. 

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I currently do home visits. I am in Wyoming there are a lot of PHN jobs here as they don’t pay well compared to hospital nursing. I decided to leave floor nursing and try and office job with good benefits. I have an ADN only and more than five years experience as a RN thats how I got my foot in the door. It’s a really fun job. I can do home or clinic visits for prenatal Postnatal and children up to age 3. I provided lactation consults education and referrals to other programs. Like any nursing job you need thick skin because not every family is going to have the same priorities as you and you need to be really flexible and open minded so you can offer healthy support to people that might have really different backgrounds. Not everyone wants to change and you have to be able to support that decision as well.  I am sure rural Wyoming home visits are much different than California ? I think most states require you to bilingual ?

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On 10/10/2020 at 7:14 AM, LemonAide said:

I currently do home visits. I am in Wyoming there are a lot of PHN jobs here as they don’t pay well compared to hospital nursing. I decided to leave floor nursing and try and office job with good benefits. I have an ADN only and more than five years experience as a RN thats how I got my foot in the door. It’s a really fun job. I can do home or clinic visits for prenatal Postnatal and children up to age 3. I provided lactation consults education and referrals to other programs. Like any nursing job you need thick skin because not every family is going to have the same priorities as you and you need to be really flexible and open minded so you can offer healthy support to people that might have really different backgrounds. Not everyone wants to change and you have to be able to support that decision as well.  I am sure rural Wyoming home visits are much different than California ? I think most states require you to bilingual ?

Thank you so much for taking the time to reply! That was really helpful. I was considering taking some lactation education courses, did you get certified in it or did you get training somewhere? And very true! Great tips, I will start working on my Spanish haha. Thanks again for responding!

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The state trained me and I am a certified lactation counselor. I just got lucky the class was offered two weeks after I hired on. 
My own life experiences have really helped with that component a lot. 

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