Alternative careers with a nursing degree?

[Lily715]

After many months of consideration I am fairly sure that I don't want to be a nurse anymore. I have completely lost the love for the profession, the demands on nurses are quite frankly ridiculous and the way the targets and paperwork are, I cannot look after my patients properly. Every shift I go home feeling guilty that I couldn't provide proper nursing care.

Does anyone have any experiences of changing careers on a background of nursing? Has anyone been a nurse for a while and then changed careers?

Any help welcome. I feel very sad to have come to this point but I just don't think I can do it anymore with the way things are.

Have you thought about working for one of the national charities like the cancer research ones? They often employ nurses for their helplines or health promotion work.
It is tricky I know, I was a nurse for 25 years, I’ve now retrained as a nursery school assistant. I love it ( busy but not stressful), and I have all the school holidays off. But I took a big pay cut! I’m lucky in that because of my dh’s wages I could afford to drop my money.

The companies that develop and sell medical software are always interested in having clinical staff on their books as it provides more assurance that they understand the requirements from a clinical point of view

@GoldenBlue thanks for your reply. Do you know how you find those kinds of jobs?

I would search for nursing software and find company names then look at their websites.
Think of organisations like system c, EMIS, clinisys, tpp etc

Clinical Research Associate. Nurses make great ones. Or a nurse in a phase 1 unit such as Parexel, looking after volunteers instead of patients. I used to work for a big Clinical Research Organisation and they employ a lot of ex nurses.

Health Visitor? My sister qualified as a nurse last year and quickly felt she'd made a mistake. She has spent this year qualifying as a health visitor, mostly out in the community doing 8.30-5pm

What about arm length bodies of the nhs? NHS england, nhs improvement, health education england, public health england, any ccg, cqc, nice etc

Think there is published research on what jobs former nurses go into.

PROSTATE CANCER UK phone and online helpline is staffed by absolutely amazing nurses

So would something like that interest you?

Sure other helplines or online would be the same

British Heart foundation

Or McMillan nurses

Or the other ones that have green as a logo

Or hospice nurses

PIP assessor?
Or smoking cessation advisor (ones I saw were paid on band 5)

@ems137 I was looking at this today. Am I right in thinking you have to do another degree in specialist community public health nursing? Can you work while you do it? I was looking at universities today that offer it and the fees are nearly ten grand

@Lily715 well my sister did her 3 year degree in children's nursing, qualified and did a very short period of working on the wards. She then decided to go into health visiting. She received a decent wage for this year of training and it was just like training on the job. For the first 6 months she worked with someone and then she was given her own caseload (didn't include complex cases or with social services involvement etc). She's about to qualify after only a year so it must just be an "add on" to her nursery degree.

nursing not nursery obviously

Out of hours clinician? Immunisation nurse? What about someone who helps with law but under medical side?

Ambulance service hire people to triage calls in their control rooms could be an option