What can I say…

Nursing can take you in so many different directions and while nursing isn’t always puppies and rainbows and unicorn tears, one of best aspects of being a nurse is the different directions this career can take you. It has taken me from the bedside in orthopedic trauma to the emergency room to the Cath lab and now…to the clinic.

Long before I went to the Cath Lab, I had put in some applications for clinic jobs at my previous hospital. One of those clinics was the dermatology clinic, where I had been a patient several years ago for my very severe cystic acne. I really liked the doctor I was seeing and I found the specialty of dermatology very interesting, albeit a drastically different one from the emergency room. So when I wanted to make a change, that was one of the first places I applied.

However, at my previous hospital, all of the clinics wanted staff with clinic experience. So my applications for three different clinics were declined. That was very disheartening but I ended up staying in the emergency room for another two years after that.

This past May/June, I started to get the same itch in the Cath lab. After awhile, being in a constant state of emergency and seeing people at the worst time of their life really starts to wear on a person. I was also ready to get off of third shift and did not want to deal with being on call and working weekends, which would have been part of working days in the Cath Lab. As luck would have it, both dermatology clinics at my current hospital system had openings and I got a spot at one of the locations. I feel very fortunate - the team I joined is really great. I’m now working 4 9-hour shifts and one 4-hour shift per week, back on a normal schedule, and feeling like myself again.

Something that I dealt with when leaving the Cath Lab was a comment made by one of the day shift nurses - “Oh, you’re just going to be a regular nurse?” as if clinic nurses aren’t REAL nurses. Just because I’m not hanging sedation and managing five drips and starting IVs doesn’t mean I’m not a real nurse. I’ve found that I’m using a while different set of skills to educate my patients and I’m learning a lot about a whole new specialty. It’s very satisfying to help patients prevent issues before they become a bigger problem.

If you’re a nurse, share where you work and if you work bedside, would you ever leave bedside for clinic?