Trouble with acute care after school nursing?

[travelnurse79]

Hello,

I am looking into school nursing but wanted to know if it was challenging getting a job after being a school nurse. If I wanted to go back to a more acute-care setting (hospital, outpt surgery, etc) after working as a school nurse, would it be hard to get a job since i hadn't used bedside skills in a while?

Thanks!

[BettyGirard, BSN]

Skills are skills. Each nursing specialty has different skills. Working in the ER is different from working in the PICU or a burn center. School nursing is no different. I do more medical history stuff as a school nurse then I ever did working in a hospital. While I don't place IVs anymore, I've got epipens and occasionally diastat orders to deal with. I can't recall ever having to give an inhaler in the hospital (we had respiratory specialists for that).

[RatherBHiking, BSN, RN]

I've never had any trouble, even after working as a school nurse and then staying home with my kids I was hired in the OR which I hated and left and then later went back to med-surg without any problems. It may depend on the area but here no problem. You will gain a lot of skills in school nursing such as independence, critical thinking, emergency care, lots of case management/social work type stuff, teaching, etc that will always help when trying to find another job.

[ruby_jane, BSN, RN]

Assuming you had a year's worth (or whatever the magic number is in your town) of acute care, you shouldn't have a problem. You might indeed find it enjoyable to have a fixed series of protocols and docs to bounce things off of versus wingin' it a lot of the time!

[MrNurse(x2), ADN]

Trust me, after any other nursing you will never want to go back to acute care. It really is the armpit of nursing, even worse than LTC in my opinion.