US Nurse - Jobs for Enrolled Nurses?

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Hi all,
I'm moving to AU soon to be with my husband. Background - I am an LVN (equivalent to Enrolled Nurse) Case Manager for a healthcare insurance company. I work directly with Dr.'s, hospitals, patient's and assist in things like care plans, discharge planning, processing discharge orders, setting up home health, transfers, outpatient procedures, nursing home placement, you name it..I do it.

All my work is office-based..documenting, telephonic. I know AU has a different healthcare system. I am just at a loss as I have been searching for similar job posts and I cannot find any. It's even harder because 1) Don't see many opportunities for Enrolled nurses and 2) I'm making almost six figures a year and I fear I may have to take a giant paycut, especially since I'm not an RN and I also have not done any direct patient care since nursing school (7 yrs ago)!

Can someone point me to the right direction as to what jobs I should be looking for - perhaps it's a different job title I should be searching for? Or am I just wasting my time if there is no such thing as case management? Is there anything else I might qualify for?

Thank you in advance

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Specializes in Surgical, quality,management.

Have a look at NDIS and private health insurance sector such as Medibank private, BUPA etc. For roles that you can do but there is nothing like what you describe. There are care coordinator roles in the public system in EDs and HARP programs but all the people I know in them are RNs.

Also be aware that EEN roles do not attract sponsorship visas so you would need to have work rights.

In all honesty you are going to take a pay cut, a significant one. I am a NUM in Victoria and only since the latest EBA pay increase will I now make $102,000 PA before tax.

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Under the Australia Health care system whilst EN's are responsible & accountable for their own practice they are not able to provide oversight of, or delegate to others: What this means in practical terms is that hold any sort of organisation/managerial role you need to be a RN.
Because of the difference between the Australian Healthcare system (which is universal although private health insurance also exists in partnership) and the US health care system, I don't think that the kind of role that you describe exists in Australia - and definitely not at the pay rates that you are used to - for context the EN pay rates
QLD: ~$62300 - $72300
WA: ~$58900 - $68068
VIC : ~$52400 - $69160
NSW: ~$55000 - $62972

As you have not been working in a clinical setting for seven years you may also find it difficult to prove recency of practice if APHRA does not recognise your work as being "nursing" - I would recommend contacting APHRA and discussing your circumstances.

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On 6/1/2019 at 1:22 AM, K+MgSO4 said:

Have a look at NDIS and private health insurance sector such as Medibank private, BUPA etc. For roles that you can do but there is nothing like what you describe. There are care coordinator roles in the public system in EDs and HARP programs but all the people I know in them are RNs.

Also be aware that EEN roles do not attract sponsorship visas so you would need to have work rights.

In all honesty you are going to take a pay cut, a significant one. I am a NUM in Victoria and only since the latest EBA pay increase will I now make $102,000 PA before tax.

Thank you, interesting information. I would be only working because I will be married to an AU citizen, so I'm not too worried about the working visa.

If you don't mind me asking - can you briefly explain the discharge process of a patient from a hospital? Who schedules the patient to see his primary and/or specialists, any procedures, arranges home health aid, nursing facility placement etc? Is it the floor nurse or does the patient call themselves to arrange?

Thank you!

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I can’t speak for every ward but on my ward -

the doctors send a referral tomorrow to any specialist or medical imaging the patient needs - May either be done privately or the patient may be booked to come back to the hospital as an outpatient.

we send a discharge summary to the patients GP (primary doctor ) and advise the patient if they need to book an appointment with the GP.

in terms of home services - depending on what they need this will be organised either by the nurse, the social worker or the allied health team . At my hospital we have a complex discharge team who also help for complicated discharges.

On my ward as well we run an outpatients clinic - so we will often send patients home with outpatient MRI, halter monitor etc booked (which the doctor does) and then they are booked to come back to our outpatients clinic after 2-3 weeks for our doctors to go over the results. (This isn’t normal for all wards)

The government funds different levels of community support - patients should see their Gp to get assessed for that package - sometimes we will assess for this in hospitals but we encourage it to be done on a primary care level

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Thanks for your quick response! Perhaps I will have an easier time looking for positions at outpatient facilities or a Dr's office. Would you agree?

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Working in a doctors office is much lower pay than hospital.

aged care facilities do tend to hire more ENs but it is more hands on clinical work

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Specializes in Surgical, quality,management.

If I am discharging a pt the doctor writes a discharge summary with instructions for follow up.

If this includes public system appointments then the ward clerk or outpatient team book the appointment, further procedures that are required need to be sent to the elective booking team in the hospital who triage them based on the state waitlist system e.g. cancer 30 days, urgent 90 days, routine 365 days.

The pt is responsible for seeing their own GP, the nurse would remind them or their family to make an appointment- the GP also automatically gets a copy of a discharge summary.

If a pt needs personal care etc at home then the OT or social worker would organize this. If they need nursing home placement they would go to a subacute ward called GEM (geriatric evaluation and management) or TCP (Transitional care programme) while they or their family find a facility. If they have no family and no capacity then a guardianship process would be initiated in subacute ward either GEM or TCP.

One of my ENs used to work in elective booking office coordinating waiting lists and doing pre admissions assessments / obs / ECGs.

I truly don't think that the job you have exists here.

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On 6/1/2019 at 4:42 AM, sparticus2008 said:

Under the Australia Health care system whilst EN's are responsible & accountable for their own practice they are not able to provide oversight of, or delegate to others: What this means in practical terms is that hold any sort of organisation/managerial role you need to be a RN.
Because of the difference between the Australian Healthcare system (which is universal although private health insurance also exists in partnership) and the US health care system, I don't think that the kind of role that you describe exists in Australia - and definitely not at the pay rates that you are used to - for context the EN pay rates
QLD: ~$62300 - $72300
WA: ~$58900 - $68068
VIC : ~$52400 - $69160
NSW: ~$55000 - $62972

As you have not been working in a clinical setting for seven years you may also find it difficult to prove recency of practice if APHRA does not recognise your work as being "nursing" - I would recommend contacting APHRA and discussing your circumstances.

Hi and thanks for your reply. Question: I was informed by a different source that there is a position called Patient Flow Manager that is similar to my experience. Are you aware of this at all?

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Specializes in Surgical, quality,management.
6 hours ago, Mitzy Bastida said:

Hi and thanks for your reply. Question: I was informed by a different source that there is a position called Patient Flow Manager that is similar to my experience. Are you aware of this at all?

It would depend on the hospital. Pt flow manager at my hospital is the bed access manager, a senior RN who allocates beds from ED to wards, confirming or cancelling elective admissions, accepting admission from regional hospitals and triage them.

A speciality hospital I called recently had a physio in this role. It would truly depend on the hospital.

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Ah, ok. I looked up Patient Flow Manager in Google and Telstra came up - "Patient Flow Manager provides hospital clinical teams with consolidated operational and clinical information to help improve patient flow and enhance clinical care."

Anyway, maybe my best bet will just be applying randomly and/or using nursing agencies to find help.

Thank you

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That's a software package developed by Telstra to help hospitals with their patient flow.

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