Are there REALLY that many different nursing jobs?

11 I am currently job hunting after working in a hospital for 5 years. I really did not enjoy my hospital experience, and keep hearing that "nursing is a broad profession."
As in there are more available nursing jobs out there than just bedside hospital nursing.

I am not seeing it.

Sure, there are case management jobs... IF you have a master's degree.
And there are clinic jobs.... IF you happen to be the personal friend or cousin of the doctor, otherwise they are few and far between.
And there is parish nursing and school nursing... IF you you don't need a paycheck and can afford to do it on a volunteer basis.
And there is teaching... IF you have MSN teaching credentials and don't mind only working two days a week IF you are one of the lucky few selected.
And there is dialysis nursing... but that doesn't seem to be too different from bedside nursing. Same thing with adult family homes.
And there is research... But again, that seems to require graduate work and being in the right place at the right time.

It just seems to me that the only real full-time jobs for nurses that an average nurse can find full-time employment in is in bedside nursing.
Am I off base here?
No, not really. Nurses in denial will tell you otherwise though.
I don't mean to sound like "sour grapes," I just keep hearing people say there are so many other options in nursing, but these options seem to be more the exception than the rule.
Quote from bree*No, not really. Nurses in denial will tell you otherwise though.
Well there ya go OP. You got the straight truth before the goody-two-shoes posters could get at your thread.
Quote from onacleardayWell there ya go OP. You got the straight truth before the goody-two-shoes posters could get at your thread.
Quote from Burlshoe114I don't mean to sound like "sour grapes," I just keep hearing people say there are so many other options in nursing, but these options seem to be more the exception than the rule.
I would say that it's true that the vast majority of nursing jobs are in bedside nursing (this, of course, is without doing any actual legwork to see if that's accurate, but that's my gut feeling). However, there are a ton of jobs for nurses that don't even involve touching patients, jobs that you don't need an MSN to get. BSN, probably, but not MSN.Clinical Informatics - this is what I do, after having done about 4 years in ICU. I do not ever touch a patient, I work as a liaison between the hospital staff and the IS department, and I am a physician-IS liaison, as well as project manage our EMR stuff. Our IS department also prefers to hire nurses to maintain and build our EMR systems and handle upgrades, etc. It also seems like our software vendor hires an awful lot of nurses to do sales, demos, and other types of project management for them.Then there's also legal nurse consultant, nurse manager, risk management, education (at our hospital, all of our educators are also nurses and some of them do not even have a BSN, only an ADN), pharmaceutical sales, insurance triage (my cousin does this and got the job right after passing her NCLEX - never worked bedside at all).I will not try to sugar coat it and pretend it's easy to get these jobs, but there is still a lot of diversity in nursing positions.
Full time, decent wage, ADN/BSN prepared, non managerial, non bedside nurse??? Keep looking if you find one take a picture of the mystical creature!!!
Infection Control Quality Improvement Utilization Review Telephone Triage Hospital based nurse educator Outpatient diagnosticsOutpatient Infusion Surgery Center Administration Physician practice managers and liaisons Information Technology Nurse Recruiter SalesMedical Device Rep. Overwhelming majority of nurses do work at the bedside!
Meandragon...WHERE???
Quote from jaimeg40Full time, decent wage, ADN/BSN prepared, non managerial, non bedside nurse??? Keep looking if you find one take a picture of the mystical creature!!!
This is a valuable thread. It points out the complexities of a truth.The ARE a wide variety of differenct types of jobs within nursing. However, the most popular ones usually require some specialized or advanced knowledge, skill, education, or experience. The average staff nurse who has not gotten those advanced/special qualifications is unlikely to be chosen for those jobs -- because the current job market is very competitive. There are many applicants for each available job and only those with the special/advanced qualifications are chosen.I work with many nurses early in their careers -- and I advise them to think about their long-term career goals -- and to keep building their credentials so that they can be one of the lucky ones chosen for the "best" jobs when they become available.