I have a degree in education and will soon be finishing up my degree in nursing. What are some career options?

I love the field of nursing, but am not sure that bedside nursing is for me. This is my second degree. I have a B.S. in education (grades 1-9) and will soon finish up my B.S. in nursing. I cannot teach nursing because I will not have any experience, plus my education degree is not for teaching college students.

What I'm wondering is if I would be able to get into any sort of field of education and nursing or just basically anything besides bedside nursing immediately after graduating? What are my options? Do I have to get experience bedside nursing first?

Education is actually a big part of nursing. You could work training other nurses, like becoming an ACLS/PALS/BLS instructor, or you could work in public education at a hospital (teaching people about different diseases, or eating healthy) or becoming a certified diabetes educator and do home visits to people's houses to make sure they're up to date on their insulin and not developing complications.

you can also do public health: home visits to teen mothers' houses and do one on one teaching about breast feeding...

It might help to have a little bit of bedside experience, but not always, and probably not in public health (they're pretty short staffed--at least where I am). I was actually offered a job in diabetes case management when I was still in nurisng school during my public health clinical---but I turned it down to work in an emergency room.

There are other jobs nurses do in the back office for example.

there are lots of nursing jobs that aren't bedside

schools have nurses in my area
ER and OR nurses -- busy with immediate procedures

some government units have visiting nurses whose job is partly educating consumers such as new mothers and relatives caring for their elders.

i'm sure there are others and my coffee hasn't kicked in yet.


GL

Jess- I see a pattern developing here. You seem to be jumping into careers without doing much research first. You apparently didn't like teaching enough to stick with it, and now you seem to not like bedside nursing.

You could teach at an LPN program with your BSN, but they would not hire you as an LPN instructor without any bedside experiene- how are you supposed to teach bedside skills if you have no real world experience yourself.

You could work in a clinic, but the pay is much lower, and you wouldn't be using many of the skills you have learned in nursing school.

If you wanted to go into education and public health, why didn't you get a deree in public health? Seems like a waste to me.