who has left the hospital/inpatient setting for outpatient or remote work? what do you do and how do you like it!? i’m looking to leave the hospital setting but don’t know what’s out there!
I worked many years as an inpatient psych RN. I now work remotely for a health insurance company doing utilization management and love it. Regular hours, flexibility, less stress, save money on commuting and meals. Hope to stay in this job until I retire.
There is home health which requires critical thinking and major organizational abilities. Case management is corporate and while I learned alot the environment is toxic with micromanagement issues and administrative backstabbing.
I love home health. Choose your hours. Get in the car after each pt and relax. Nice one on one with pt
I retired from inpatient nursing in 2017. Last job was as a hospital supervisor in a small 165 bed suburban hospital. Thought I would be happy getting away from all the admin bullshit and paperwork, but I found I missed the patients (good and bad) and the nursing staff (good and bad). After about 4 months of doing stuff around the house and feeling kind of lonely (lots of my friends were still working full time and the neighbors that were around on my block were all much older than I or also working so no one would have been around to hear my screams for help if I fell off the roof whilst replacing shingles), I decided to do some call-in work at a small surgery center attached to the hospital I retired from. It turned out to be the best of all worlds. I got to use my clinical skills, had lots of interaction with patients and staff, didn't have to worry about working weekends, holidays, nights, or doing call. My bosses were great and the work was easy compared to what I did previously. That's the good stuff.
On the other side of the coin was insidious mission creep - the longer I was there, my bosses started asking me to do projects and before long I was the safety officer and the infection preventionist. It wasn't a far stretch from what I did before so I didn't think much of it, but the extra responsibilities ate into my free time and the call-in job turned into a full-time job. Pay was significantly less than what I was making in the hospital but because I was retired, it didn't really matter until I realized I was doing a lot of stuff for the ASC gratis (picking up supplies from Costco, using my tools to do some repairs around the ASC, etc.). I negotiated a pay raise to account for some of the free work I was doing but it still was much less than what I was earning doing comparable work at the hospital. Again, not an issue since the extra money goes to enhance our vacations. I finally made the decision to pull the plug at age 65 which will be next year. Currently training my replacement and deciding whether to renew my nursing license (ran into a retired nursing acquaintance who convinced me to keep it current - you never know).
Every location is different - my advice to you is to just get out there and get your feet wet. I did all kinds of stuff in my nursing career - mobile lithotripter, flight nursing, airport nurse, IV therapy, case management, clinical educator, ER, ICU, perioperative, etc. You won't know if you like it or not until you try it. Even if the job pays much less than what you would like, the experience can be valuable. When I was working full time, I still had anywhere from 1-2 side jobs. I even had a side business teaching BLS, PALS, and ACLS. The nursing world really can be your oyster and if you keep shucking, eventually, you will find a pearl. Keep shucking.
I left the bedside after only 5 years when I realized that it just was not for me.
I joined a managed care plan as a field Complex Case Manager and almost 5 years later am still there, now as a supervisor.
It is an ever changing world in managed care as federal and state regulations are always evolving, so adaptability is a must.
It comes with its own stressors of course, mainly caseload sizes and staffing in nursing as usual, Regulations, and compliance admin work. Pay is not comparable to the hospitals and will never be but I make a comfortable living and the schedule works wonderfully for my family life.
What I advise my nurses that make the transition from bedside is to think of the work as a marathon not a sprint. Nothing is truly urgent and problems are rarely solved in a single “shift”.
What I like most is we get to impact patient lives outside of the high pace hospital environment, it allows us to get to the root of the problem and meet them where they’re at rather than just putting a bandaid on the presenting problem.
I was in the hospital for 30 years as a manager of L&D. I got my Masters at age 50 and worked the last 20 yrs as an NP….the best part of my career! I worked in private practice with my own patient load, every weekend off, no call, and I loved it! Also worked in a Womens Clinic for a few years. I love the autonomy. Another area is medical device sales, if you can get it in. You set your own hours, do inservices in the OR or other hospital facilites and sell your product. you can make a ton of money doing that, but it is hard to break into. The wonderful thing about nursing is the huge amount of careers you can tap into…medical journalism, teaching, sales, advice for TV and movies on proper medical jargon and actions, health care advocate (a budding new career!!). Figure out the direction you want to go, do the research, and GO FOR IT!!
Would you be interested in training the next generation of nurses? That is one way to go.
When I first left the hospital I did school nursing. I also went into home care and hospice.
Now I am training new nurses.
