Yet another cry for career help...

[catlady, BSN, RN]

Need some career advice. Appreciate anyone's patience who can sort through what I'm saying.

First of all, I'm not working right now. Long-term care facility and I parted ways, my choice, but not amicably. I posted my resume on monster.com and got a lot of answers, none of which have turned into anything useful. Much as it's been lovely hanging out by the pool, I have to make a decision about work.

I have exactly one job offer. It is for a telemetry unit in a mid-sized urban hospital about 20 miles away. The pay is ok, the benefits are ok. Managers couldn't have been nicer at the interview. The ratio is 1:5, even on day shift. That seems high to me. Went to do paperwork at the hospital yesterday and heard rumblings that this is a very stressful, busy unit staffed by agency. They are expecting me in two weeks.

I've had very little success in trying to get an acute care job. I have many years of ICU experience, but it's been five years since I worked at the bedside. Even though I just went on my own to get my ACLS back (and was pleasantly surprised at how much I remembered!), the hospitals don't really want me. I could do management or case management, as I have a background in both, but I don't want to. I could go back into LTC--have mucho expertise in MDS--but also don't want to.

I am a single mom and have a teenager graduating from HS in 2 years. She doesn't want to go to a 4 yr college, and I have set her up so that she will be ok financially at least to start when she finishes HS. So no guilt there, but I'm tied down now.

I'm currently 48 years old and I have the wanderlust. I get very restless staying in one place or one job. I just moved last year after being in the same house for 14 years (due to lousy housing market), and already I'm going cuckoo. Seems like travel nursing would be the perfect life, but I don't have the recent bedside experience. So it seems that going to this hospital and sticking it out for a year or two would be perfect timing with my kid's graduation, then I could travel.

At the same time, I looked into going to massage therapy school. I've thought about it for years, and now I might be able to afford it. Massage therapists seem to make a decent hourly rate, but they usually can't work 40 hours because of the physical demands. And I don't know how well my old body would handle the physical demands, anyway. But it just sounds lovely to go to work where the environment is required not to be stressful. If I go to school full-time, I can't work full-time. I'm scared of blowing all my savings to go to school. My teenager is afraid her standard of living will drop if I go to school.

I have never liked being a nurse. It was never what I wanted to do, yet it's turned out to be my life career. Since the deaths of both my parents at relatively young ages, I've really focused on how short life is and how awful it is to spend it doing something you hate. Yet nursing--if I get that acute care experience back--will give me the freedom that I also want.

I'm so confused....

[Tweety, BSN, RN]

That's a tough one. Sounds like you've given it a lot of thought.

Good luck in whatever you do.

[NRSNFL]

Well, I wish I knew what to tell you but I will say that it doesn't sound like nursing is for you at all. Sounds like you're doing it just to maintain. As far as massage therapy, this sounds like a "leap of faith" you may have to reinvest your time in, and a better fit for you. Are you an "outside the box" person, because you sound it (which isn't bad, I tend to resemble one myself) however I think I may be more in the box than you. But use the trait to your advantage. Massage therapy school could also be timed well for when your kids graduate and you are only financially responsible for YOU. Good luck

[tencat]

If you would be happier doing something else, you should do it. I think your teenager will survive if the standard of living goes down a bit. You've already set up some money for him/her to get started in life, so I really don't think you 'owe' your teen anything else. Besides, that's what part-time jobs are for if kids want extra money.........

[Daytonite, BSN, RN]

Because of my back problems and problems standing now, I went into medical coding and now health information management (you might know it by it's old term medical records). If you like computers it's gotten to be quite an exciting field. Only requires an AA degree and there are lots of ways to go with it, similar to the many choices you have as a nurse. With your nursing background you would sail through the coursework and shouldn't even have to re-take A&P and pathophysiology.

As a coder, I worked for emergency room doctors. There is a large medical billing and coding firm around where I live that will only hire RNs with ICU and ER experience and teaches them to code ER charts for their billing services. Pays well. Only have to show up in the office two days a week for a few hours. Otherwise, you can take your work home. This is full time work. The reason they use RNs is because RNs understand the procedures they are reading about in the physician dictations and can catch a possible procedure that can be coded and billed even though the physician may not have identified it by an actual procedure name.