I (25 m) am an ICU RN. I make decent money and know that I will always be able to find a job. Those are the 2 things that not every field can offer. However, over the past few years, I have grown to resent working as a nurse and in healthcare in general. I’ve tried switching hospital systems, and nothing really changed for me. The environment is very toxic and now having worked in the field for 3+ years, I have started to feel pigeon-holed into working in healthcare.
I understand COVID unleashed a special kind of pain on healthcare, but I don’t see the lasting effects changing anytime soon. I don’t want to be locked in to a field that I resent like this, but I also know that advancing my career in nursing like I originally planned to could help (CRNA or NP school).
I’m torn between looking into different fields entirely or buckling down and further advance my education in nursing. Any advise is greatly appreciated.
26 comments
My ex used a website that was like a career finder test.
It asked him questions of what his interests were, his strengths, his weaknesses etc. Then gave him some options of possible future career paths and schemes he could try to get into that line of work.
Unfortunately I can’t remember the name of the webpage he went on. But worth a search.
I couldn’t imagine what you have been through in your line work and completely understand why you may want to switch.
🤞🏼you find what you’re looking for
Use your nursing background to get into HIM. There’s plenty of RN clinical documentation specialist opportunities.
Hi, I use to be a nurse absolutely loved it. Memory care was my favorite. Unfortunately the burn out hit me hard. The toxic work place makes mean girls and High school drama nothing, aside from that the family and patients which I didn’t mind at all I rather deal with family than coworker drama any day. It was the same everywhere I went. I quit and used covid as an excuse to let my license go. Honestly I didn’t have a back up plan i worked warehouse jobs for a few years. That’s what I did before nursing.
Find something you enjoy doing and make it a career. I started my own business it’s it’s a great business but its a good starting to make money to get a business I actually enjoy. I’ve never had any hobbies or talents I could never keep a job due to being late to never wanting to go into work (the warehouse not nursing) I created a job/career.
I’m a union plumber.
I wasn’t a nurse or anything, but I have seen a good chunk of males nurses coming into the blue collar world recently.
While the actual work is more labor intensive, everything else is pretty chill, and the schedule is pretty consistent. They all seem to really like it and the pay is always pretty great.
It seems like it’s not just healthcare workers, but everyone who works in the healthcare industry. About 15 years ago, I was working in healthcare IT as part of the Network Security team for a local hospital. At the time, I felt like we were doing a lot of good because they were so woefully out of day on their network security, and my team was performing a majorize modernization overhaul. However, as you say, the environment in healthcare is very toxic. And the pay, comparatively speaking, isn’t that great (for example, our annual bonus was a $25 gift card). I left after about 5 years and went into telecom. It was an instant 50% increase in salary, much better benefits, annual bonuses in the range of 10% – 20%, and a much more chill, laid back environment with people who are enjoyable to work with.
It seems to me that if you’re only 3 or 4 years in and are already feeling burned out, you should very seriously consider changing careers. Doubling-down with a CRNA or NP is only going to make you feel more trapped.
Do you hate the patient side of the coworkers or everything?
I just hired a burnt out nurse to work on the helpdesk section of my team, she’s doing incredibly well and is happy she made the change.
She said she’s going to keep her nursing credentials current but that’s just the backup plan.
Why not be a traveler? Sell your junk or put it in storage. Get a travel job for a month or two, bank most of that money. Backpack Vietnam/Cambodia/Laos/Thailand for a few months. That should get the cobwebs out.
Rinse and repeat.
You have a well-paying high demand job. Use that to your benefit. Society shows us a well-traveled rutted path and we fall into without thinking. Think about how you want to live.
Become a CRNA, work independently as your own business and travel to take the highest paying contracts, then enjoy the $300-400k you’ll be making and take whatever time off you want and retire whenever you want.
Been a nurse 6 years and realized (was told the realization really) if you don’t like being nurse you won’t like anything in healthcare. I thought man what if I was a doctors, that’d be the answer. An NP that’d be great, why not a CRNA?! No, they’re all in healthcare, the toxic environment is where certain healthcare workers thrive. Others don’t. You might want to switch your career up, you’re still super young.
I work in occupational safety and have worked with nurses who burned out in general healthcare setting but enjoyed working as onsite nurses and manufacturing facilities.
Pharma sales.
If you aren’t totally burned out, maybe consider school nursing. You can make decent money, and you get all the summer months off.
You can always work per diem if you need more cash.
You can try becoming a practice manager/office manager for a doctor’s office.
You can try pharma sales.
You might be able to teach in a nursing program.
I would try different fields of nursing first. If you have then I would recommend looking into the management side of hospitals or medical sales. I know a few nurses that switched to medical sales and make excellent money.
Honestly I’ve been a nurse for about 5 years and I absolutely hate it. Plus, the women in nursing can be absolutely awful. In California the nurses from the Philippines are taking over the industry and bully the other races of nurses, only promote their own, etc.
I was an ICU nurse and felt the same. Went to CRNA school when I turned 25 and it’s been the best decision I ever made. I could never be a nurse again, especially these days.
Well, we healthcare professionals are sorta pigeon-holed in healthcare, as we’re trained into a very specific skillset. Have you tried not working in a ICU unit? maybe switch onto a teaching role? can you work on a more administrative capacity? as to not get so burned out by clinical duties and direct patient care.
I’m an MD, and during rotations and after graduating medschool, I realised and came to confirm that I don’t like working directly with patients. I don’t like doing consults. so I tried and matched into pathology. Now I’m on my last year of residency training and I work with a microscope. best decision ever.
Hey so I’m a RN of about 3 years. My advice to you is to look into different RN roles that are available. My hospital has RN roles such as “nurse educator” and they work 3 12s no weekends, or holidays. They basically provide education to staff on new policies or equipment that comes out. If staffing is extremely tight they might help out on the floor as a resource. It’s a pretty nice position. Others have also mentioned nurse anesthetist, which is probably the most value for your time vs. money but involves considerable investment schoolwise.
I also thought I hated nursing until I switched to a critical care float position. I found out I just hated the controlling aspect of my old manager. I now have almost full control of my schedule, working Monday – Wednesday and hardly ever work anymore weekends. It’s awesome.
Have you considered looking at third party administrators or workers compensation insurance carriers?
your experience would be super valuable in commercial insurance, specifically medical management
They need people with strong clinical backgrounds for catastrophic claims management to ensure their reserves are protected or even driven down
food for thought…
I teach English abroad. It was supposed to be something I did for just 2 years or so. I didn’t have a teaching degree, just a 160 hour certificate that I did to let me get the job. I liked it so much that after two years I got a better certificate, ended up teaching at a technical college abroad, did an MA in Teaching English, and now teach at a national university. I’m on year 11 now. Pay isn’t great, but it isn’t bad, but I only work 20 hours/week and get 8-20 weeks of paid vacation a year. And I know when I decide to go home there will always be a good job waiting for me that *does* pay well.
Moving abroad is a huge thing though, so obviously not for everyone. Especially if you are in a relationship.
There is good work and a change in lifestyle in clinical research nursing, and great career potential from there. From working in a clinical research unit in a cancer hospital, research nurses don’t work shifts and are maybe 1/3 to 1/2 office-based. Once you have research experience and if you are academically inclined you can move into industry in biotech or pharma where salaries are a lot higher, though it will be academically demanding.
A very long way from boots-on-the-ground healthcare but still uses your training and can be very rewarding.
Can you transition to something that has you a little farther removed from the hustle and bustle of standard nursing and specialize in something like radiology? I think you can even do some of that remotely like reading x-rays.
Insurance companies sometimes employ RNs. We have nurses where I work who are occupational health specialists. Some government regulators employ nurses, too. In all of those jobs, you don’t treat patients, you use your medical knowledge to assist with things like processing claims, investigating fraud, finding accommodations for employees.
ER nurse here. The pandemic made me realise that it doesn’t matter how much I love my job if I hate every workplace. What I mean is that while I like the actual work I do, all the organisations I’ve worked for have been a poor fit at best and terrible at worst. I’ve hated all of them for the same reasons and changing jobs has made no difference.
So I would say that figure out what exactly it is that you resent about your job and whether it’s fixable by changing jobs or changing your role within the field. It could be, or it could not.
Personally, I love doing emergency care and working with patients, but I hate the workplace. And while I love ER and EMS, I absolutely detest working anywhere else in a hospital. In conclusion, this is not a problem I can fix while staying in healthcare. It’s the healthcare field that’s the problem.
I started out as an EMT and in retrospect, this is certainly why going to nursing school didn’t help. Now I just feel like I have wasted more years in a field I don’t want to work in—thrown good money after the bad, so to speak. In retrospect, I wish I had spent the time I did slogging through nursing school at studying something else. Maybe then I’d have a degree I actually wanted to use.
Clinical Licensed Social Worker.
Hi,
What makes it a toxic environment?
Curiosity, as I’m considering a profession in Healthcare