1 year in and lost - advice please

[TammyTho]

I never thought I’d feel more lost one year into my nursing career than I did when I first started nursing but here I am antsy and confused.

It took me 7 years to complete my associates to become an RN as I was raising a family and working full time. I’m 40 years old, nursing is my second career with a background in office management. I’ve been working a stepdown floor and am cross trained to work the ICU. I don’t hate what I’m doing but I don’t really love it either so I’m trying to figure what my next steps should be to find a good fit for me.

I’ve learned that I love my job on days that I’ve had to really use my assessment skills due to a significant change in my patient that I’ve caught, had to puzzle out with the Drs the cause and was able to make a difference for their care or days that I’ve been able to provide support to the patients/families that are making big code status/hospice type of decisions. But the endless med pass and toileting and turning and water delivery and call lights and b.s. just down right bores and drains me. Am I being naive to think there is a position out there that would be a better fit? Where I’d be using my assessing skills, puzzling out issues for patients actually feeling necessary? I was considering EDbut there are so many stories of nonsense (should have gone to their regular Dr) patients there as well. Maybe a trauma type of nursing? How does one get to that point of knowledge?

Also considering the total opposite end of the spectrum of hospice care, somethings telling me that may not be a good fit. Maybe back to something more administrative based where I’m fixing problems or teaching or? I just want to give back in some way, feel necessary and like what I’m doing needs to be done.

or should I just realize it’s not what I thoug it was going to be and head the more case management route where I can get paid and do the paperwork type job I’m used to with the normal working hours I’m used to..

I’m lost, no idea which direction I should be taking steps in and feeling too old to waste too much time.

[vanilla bean]

Have you considered going back to school and pursuing an advanced degree for an APRN role?

[WestCoastSunRN, MSN, CNS]

What would you think of higher acuity nursing? You say you are cross-trained for ICU -- does this mean you can take any ICU patient? Is the ICU at your hospital high acuity?

It sounds like you would like more of an intellectual challenge. There is still plenty of hands on care (cleaning up poop, etc) in a high acuity unit, so if you are wanting to get away from that, it is not a good choice, but if you are OK with bedside nursing but want to do more critical thinking, then ICU (full on ICU) might be a good choice.

[studentnurseASN]

While talking with nurses about jobs they have told me ICU and stepdown are very intense units. Some units will not take new grads because of it. I'm not sure where you live but there are a lot of different nursing jobs I have been looking into besides hospitals.

Nursing supervisor requires less physical labor, but it can be overwhelming with staff to patient ratios.

Nurses can also look over EHR records from different facilities and hospitals from home. I was on orientation with one mother who chose the job in order to spend more time with her kids.

Units in specialty hospitals may have less patient ratios with more family interaction. In one unit where I worked in nurses where given 2 to 3 patients each.

Lot of options for work with an active license. Good luck!

[traumaRUs, MSN, APRN]

Some great answers. How about determining what you like about your job and what you dislike? Then you can look into jobs with a lot of your pluses and less of your negatives.