nursing

I have always thought I should have gone to nursing school. It was one of those nagging thoughts I had while at school at KU, getting my business degree. I knew I needed to get that business degree, but I couldn't quite figure out where the nursing thing fit in.

After I graduated from KU, I was working for a company that paid heath insurance claims (see, at some level I knew that I needed to be in the health field). All of our clients were self-insured businesses. It was an interesting and exciting job. It was my first job out of college. I was making a name for myself and proving myself. While I was working there I went "back" to school to get my Master's degree; this time in Public Administration with my emphasis in Health Care Administration. Again, it was there, in this brain, somewhere...health.

After I graduated, I went to work for an insurance broker as the operations manager for the part of their business that sold health insurance. While the job itself sucked, as well as the people I worked with, I learned very quickly that I really didn't like being on that particular side of the product. Sometimes all it takes is 2 weeks at a job to know for sure you don't want to be there.

When Todd and I moved to Topeka and got married, I took a job as the administrator of a Family Practice Residency Clinic. I needed to have a job in the same town I lived in (I was commuting to KC before that), and I loved the idea of running a clinic. What better way to marry the things I was educated in? I was in charge of all of the "business side" of the clinic. This included all of the office folks, front desk people, schedulers, etc. I took care of the A/P, payroll, computer systems and those who filed the claims. To put it plainly, I LOVED my job. However, there was still something nagging me.

All of those nurses and doctors (and the doctors-in-training) thought that I didn't know anything about running a clinic if I didn't have any "scientific" educational training. Every suggestion I made was construed as "reducing patient care"," or"eliminating patient contact." Needless to say, I was a patient too. I TOTALLY understood those things. It was my job to try to reconcile the two so that we were performing the right services on the right people as efficiently as possible. Now I could see EXACTLY why I needed to go to nursing school. If I had gotten any sort of nursing degree (regardless if I had practiced nursing or not) I would have been highly respected and my suggestions and policies would have been much more widely accepted. Ugh. 30 years old, first child on the way, and I finally knew why I had this nagging feeling about nursing school.

I applied and was the second choice (first loser) for the Department Head for the Mental Health Department at the only hospital here in Salina. Oh well. It turned out that I wasn't disappointed, mostly because of all of the politics involved and other things about the hospital here. Plus also, I wouldn't have the awesome job I have now, and would never have gotten to know my bosses.

Don't ask me why I felt the need to tell you all of this, my fingers just started typing it when I was originally going to tell you about how much of a nurse I had to be the other night for my family. That will have to come in another post.

>>image from nurseynicole's flickr photostream