There was a time where, statistically, a person would change jobs 11 to 12 times before the age of 50. The numbers today have declined, as researchers expect an individual to change his or her job roughly four times before the age of 32. Given both statistics, remaining a registered nurse for a lifetime isn’t logical. For a nurse who wants to move on to a new career, it helps to know job opportunities that are more inviting to someone with nursing experience.
Why Do Nurses Change Careers?
There is no right or wrong answer regarding why someone decides not to continue his or her career as a nurse. Some nurses decide they still want to be in the nursing field, but they just do not want to be in a hospital or medical practice anymore. Other nurses want to leave the nursing industry behind and pursue something entirely different. Fortunately, there are options for both.
Staying in the Nursing Industry
Obviously, shifting to a different career path within the nursing industry makes it incredibly easy to get a job when a person has previous nursing experience. Teaching and nursing home nurses are a few options for someone who wants to shift away from the hospital and/or medical practice positions.
Nursing Homes
Nursing homes and assisted living facilities are always in demand for registered nurses. If a nurse doesn’t mind working with older and/or disabled individuals, this is a great option. The biggest challenge with working in a nursing home is becoming attached to residents and losing them when they die of old age. For someone with a tender heart, this could be a difficult job to have.
Teaching
Individuals with nursing job experience make ideal teachers at a medical school. Teachers with nursing experience can use actual stories from their past as tools to teach future nurses and doctors.
School Nurse
For someone who wants to continue to be a nurse but leave the hospital, schools are always in demand for registered nurses. Having experience at a hospital or medical practice makes someone an ideal candidate for a school nurse.
Leaving the Nursing Industry
Not everyone who decides to leave a career as a registered nurse at a hospital or medical practice wants to continue to be a nurse somewhere else. Fortunately, there are also a lot of job alternatives for someone who fits that definition, as well. While nursing experience is a great foundation for these jobs, they are entirely different career paths:
- Legal Consultant and Expert Witness on Medical or Health Cases
- Academic Health Writer
- Forensic Nurse Consultant
- Mortician
- Midwife
- Daycare Provider
Staying in the Hospital
Naturally, a nurse also has the option of additional training and schooling to become a doctor or a surgeon. Nursing experience is a great foundation for mastering skills necessary to perform other jobs in a hospital or medical practice. A nurse case manager would also be ideal for someone who wants to stay in the hospital. As a nurse case manager, an individual would oversee the nursing staff at a hospital or medical practice. Having walked in the shoes of the nurses the individual would now manage, he or she is a great candidate for the position.
Going Back to School
If none of the ideal job alternatives for nurses appeal to someone who wants a career change, going back to school is another option. There is certainly nothing wrong with going back to school to pursue an entirely different career path. This is something a lot of people do later in life when they become bored with their current career path.
Learn more about career paths a lot of individuals took before becoming nurses by checking out our article, “Fewer new nurses starting their careers in hospitals.”
This article is very misleading and the author is very unfamiliar with the medical, hospital, and the nursing profession.
Case managers DO NOT oversee other nurses! Never!
Also, case management is one of the most stressful positions in a hospital setting. Case manager to patient ratios are often 1:20-45 PER DAY. On the weekends the ratio can be 1:70-125 depending on the hospital.
Most hospitals have taken the task of completing the initial and concurrent reviews from the Utilization Management RNs and now the case managers have that responsibility. Additionally, many hospitals used to have clerical assistance for the case managers who did the faxing, equipment ordering and home health coordination for discharging patients, the tasks that it did not take an RN License to do. In most hospitals, the case manager assistant job has been eliminated supposidly to save money. The CMs are now responsible for these tasks. Within 24 hours of a patient’s admission, the CM is required to meet with every patient and or their family to assess and document the current status of and projected needs of the patient upon discharge so that all discharge needs can be coordinated, including the appropriate transition destination and transportation coordination. CMs they are always assigned more tasks in their 8 hour shift than they can possibly complete and then are berated because they have not completed everything assigned to them within their 8-hour shift.
Many case managers are leaving case management because of the low quality of job satisfaction, frustration, and the unrelenting stress. In most hospitals case management has developed into a no win position.
Case Management is everything you said and more. There is constant change and demands placed on care managers with no end in site to the changes. There is no back up assistance to amount to anything. I resigned after almost 2 years because my A type personality could not handle feeling defeated by unfinished work every day of my job. I kept being reassured that I was doing a good job, but was constantly expected to do more and more with each monthly update. Same hours, same pay, more work than humanly possible to do it correctly.
I second that!
This is a very short and pointless post/article…not too mention wrong and misleading and confusing. As a RN myself I can say that nursing homes are not hiring many RNs. Why? Because they can get away with hiring LPNs for less money. And the paragraph about staying in the hospital environment and going on to be a surgeon! What?! If I didn’t know better, that paragraph makes it sound like a perfectly easy and viable jump. It would require medical school and generally another 5 years of a residency program. The author may think that’s common knowledge but you cannot write an article stating unclear ideas making the presumption that your audience just knows something already. That is something I learned early on in my BSN schooling. I’m guessing this author isn’t even a nurse.