Lateral Career Shifts in Nursing

Posted by nurse on December 11, 2010 under Featured, Nursing Careers | Be the First to Comment

Nurses can lose their motivation due to burnout. Many nurses complete their academic work and find when they enter clinical treatment courses they do not like the active process of community care nursing. The hospital setting can be stressful and after a period of years many nurses look for work outside the formal facility environment. Or it may simply be time for a nursing change of pace.

Events can transpire that change a nurse’s feelings about healthcare organizations, or expected advancement may not happen commensurate with training. Perhaps the available opportunities in their given area of residence do not match standards. Once upon a time, nursing stopped and started at the physician’s side. But today’s nurses have other choices. And online nursing courses can supplement existing education if any additional nursing classes are necessary.

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Training in specific diseases and their ongoing acute and chronic symptoms can prepare home caregivers with additional focus to particular diseases and their patient demographics. Performing nursing duties in assisted care living can relax the nurse after the stress of a high volume inpatient hospital. And individual patients can benefit from the cases admitted to a nursing facility that nurse has seen.

Some patients have living circumstances that do not allow for frequent hospital visits. The underserved may not see the ratio of nurses to individual cases they might like. The call to nursing can be answered by exchanging patient pools for new incidences of disease. The benefit of a real person capable of understanding the challenges of recovery and coping with any disease cannot be overestimated.

A lateral shift to another nursing environment can continue vertical progress to enlarged responsibility or senior status within the nursing community. After a sequence of concentrated single-field nursing in the home or in a community setting for eldercare or even children, the nurse may return to a hospital setting with more focused historical references to specific diseases and conditions.

Thanks to today’s technology, many new options in home caregiving are available. Nurses with the proper training, even licensed vocational nurses (LVN) can become specialized home caregivers or assisted living nurse specialists. Knowledge of long term effects and coping experience can earn a nurse a shot at a more elevated and prestigious hospital position. Some research facilities demand specialized nursing qualifications only immediate disease specific caregiving can confer.

In-home and assisted living patients can have all manner of physical ailments. Patients recovering from surgery, epileptic sufferers, autistic caregiving or dementia nursing can be a valuable part of any nurse’ contribution to the field. Schizophrenics and cancer survivors always need qualified nurse caregivers to cope with daily life or postsurgical or postprocedural events.

Nurses who want more an individual investment in their patient’s well-being can practice online and do telecaregiving. This computer and telephone assisted video conferencing can let nurses anywhere communicate with their patients and keep tabs on their medicines, exercise, sleep, and daily interests. Homebound sufferers of stroke, Alzheimer’s, and other diseases can benefit greatly from at-home caregivers who have been nurses.

Emerging disease problems in several medical populations have provoked a need for nurses with specific skills. Menu planning, daily dialogues, emotional support and caregiving for diabetic patients, obesity caregiving and eldercare are essentially marketable skills in the new nursing economy. Depressives, terminal and respite patients as well as hospice care is always looking for qualified staff.

Occupational nursing has branched out into so many fields a nurse can identify the need that calls them the most and follow it. If the energy is no longer found in day to day emergency nurse care, post operative or surgical care, or even general medicine, the nurse’s abilities may have grown beyond that role. A lateral move to a more specialized nursing position might carve a new path in the traditional nursing career.