Urgent Care?

[rose5, BSN]

Hi guys! I am looking for some advice about maybe moving toward an urgent care clinic ! I'm a new nurse (about to hit my 1 year mark) and have been working on a cardiac/med-surg floor at a hospital. I love the people and teamwork on my floor, but I am finding it really hard to keep my head up in the midst of all the med-surg craziness, short-staffing, and general stressors that come with bedside nursing. So, I have been looking into some job openings in my area and found an Urgent Care RN clinic position! It is 8-8 three days a week so pretty similar to my current 7-7 job along with rotating weekends which I already do, so it does not look bad to me shift wise. I've interned in a clinic before and absolutely loved it with getting patients in and out, clinic testing, teaching, etc., so I feel like I would really enjoy it and that it would be a nice (maybe less stressful in ways) change from bedside nursing.

However, I am struggling with whether I should apply or not because I am still so new at nursing... is it too early to even consider switching to a role outside of bedside so soon? I was thinking of trying to start in January or sometime near the end of the year so I would definitely finish my full year + a few months of bedside experience, but is it recommended to do at least 2 years of bedside nursing before trying something else? With nursing I know there are SO many options out there (I've always been interested in different areas like urgent care, primary care, public health nursing and even mother/baby) so if I switched to urgent care now, would I kind of be dead-ending my options to try other things later on or would urgent care just help open up more opportunities for later? If I switched now, would I ever be able to get back into bedside if I so desired it? I guess I am just worried about changing to urgent care because I really don't want to dig my future career options into the ground per se if I switch out of bedside nursing so early on in my career if that makes sense... but at the same time I feel like a change is needed with how stressful bedside has been lately. Obviously I'm super indecisive about this, but I would love to get others' opinions on this! 

[monz1987, RN]

You do not have to follow the traditional route of staying for 2yrs where you at. If you desire urgent care setting then go for it, but weigh out all your pros and cons if you do. Also think longterm if that is where you want to be. Hope this helps