This post was written by a guest contributor.
How does it feel to be told you’re a hero? Does it fill you with pride, pressure, or panic?
The term is usually meant as a compliment, and who are we to judge someone complimenting us? But for nurses, it comes with an unspoken message: nurses should soldier on, sacrifices should be made, and they should be there every day, even if they’re running empty, which perhaps explains why, in the U.S. alone, 74% of nurses report feeling emotionally drained from work.
But nurses are just human, not caped crusaders, and they have families, physical limits, and bodies that need sleep and vacations.
Wouldn’t it be nice, for once, to work in a less frantic environment and not feel like you don’t have a life outside your job? If this is you, it's perhaps time to consider a change.
Luckily, not every career transition requires leaving the profession altogether. There are other less demanding positions for burned-out RNs and LPNs. You might have been considering the possibilities; you just didn’t know what your options were.
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Start by assessing your burnout
Burnout among nurses isn’t always obvious; sometimes it shows in more subtle ways, like detachment from patients, anxiety about work, and feeling like work is always asking for more than you can give.
This may not dissipate or even fade enough over the years at all. Typical conditions in healthcare work settings — the amount of time spent working, the amount of stress endured, the critical shortages of nursing staff, the emotionally taxing nature of providing patient care, the frequent encounter with death and suffering — can all compound in a short time until you feel like you’re merely surviving at this level of constant exhaustion, the level you’ve simply gotten used to. And truthfully, you don’t need to feel like you lack resilience.
When considering a transition, changing the trajectory of your career may just be the best option to preserve your wellbeing while holding onto your wealth of clinical expertise, communication skills, and experience with patients you’ve cared for along the way.
5 high-impact career pivots for burnt-out nurses
If bedside care has worn you out, there are many non-bedside nursing jobs that are less stressful and will still allow you to make a difference.
1. Case management and care coordination
Nurse case management takes you away from the urgency of bedside care and into the bigger picture of overall patient care. In this role, you’ll create care plans, coordinate patient discharge, work with healthcare providers and insurance companies, and help guide new nurses while they navigate the profession as beginners.
Even though you’ll still be practicing many of the skills you’ve learned throughout your career as a nurse, the nature of the work is different.
Instead of being on a continuum of urgent patient matters, you’ll be more involved in the planning process that involves documentation, coordination, and advocating for the patient.
This is ideal for an extremely organized, unshakeable nurse who can guide fellow care workers when navigating the system.
2. Telehealth and remote triage
In recent years, remote nursing jobs have increased, and for many overworked nurses, they’re a good alternative to demanding and physically exhausting traditional bedside jobs.
The tasks vary depending on the particular role: you may monitor patients’ symptoms remotely, help manage chronic diseases, provide instructions, answer questions, and triage patients to appropriate levels of care. But of course, these aren’t necessarily stress-free. You must still demonstrate competitive clinical skills and communicate well, which, as any nurse understands, come with some level of pressure.
Telehealth roles are a good option for nurses who are tired of the physical exertion and endless noise that are common in hospital settings. Remote nursing is perfect if you want to interact with patients but without the chaos of a nursing unit, so long as you take breaks and watch for signs of fatigue during long hours online.
3. Nursing informatics
If you’re detail-oriented and love tech, you may want to check out nurse informatics. A nursing informaticist applies their clinical understanding and information science skills to enhance processes, systems, and workarounds.
You’ll work with an Electronic Health Record (EHR) system and train other nurses and healthcare professionals, improve patient care processes, and evaluate workflows for efficiency.
For nurses who still want to make an impact as a professional but are burned out by bedside work, it’s a great field to pivot into. Instead of working with patients one-on-one, you're working on the systems and workflows that run patient care in the background. If you're a nurse who’s also interested in technology and problem-solving, this might be for you.
4. Aesthetic nursing
The aesthetic nursing world is vastly different from acute care, as it deals mostly with dermatological and cosmetic procedures.
The appeal for many nurses is the consistency of tasks, which are much less physically demanding, not to mention the fixed daytime work hours. The role also entails stabilizing and monitoring patients during invasive surgical procedures, which is less manic than hospital settings. The job requires specialized certifications, which may vary per state and employer, but it’s an attractive new route for nurses who want to focus on more relaxed, one-on-one patient interaction.
5. School or occupational health nursing
If you prefer predictable work, consider the position of a school nurse or perhaps an occupational health nurse, as both roles, for the most part, have predictable daily tasks.
School nurses provide care for often minor injuries and illnesses, handle issues related to the medical needs of chronically ill children, administer medications to students, perform health screenings, and provide information about health topics to students and parents.
Health promotion and injury prevention within an organization are typical responsibilities for an occupational health nurse, whose work can involve providing an on-site clinic for both students and school employees, promoting good health practices, or assisting staff with their work compensation claims.
Both nursing roles are often fairly independent professions and can certainly keep an alert nurse occupied, but they're less harried than a hospital setting, stick to the typical workday, and usually only cover preventive care, as serious cases are immediately referred to hospital care.
Keep burnout in check with flexible nursing jobs
Sometimes the problem is not the specialty, but the structure.
Nursing jobs that offer flexibility and more breathing space could be the answer for nurses who feel burned out from years of demanding bedside care. In many alternative nursing roles, you can choose when, where, and how many shifts you want to take on. You’re also less likely to be required to work on wee hours and high-stakes units or rotate across different units and care levels. This means less pressure and optional workload, which takes away a lot of stress for nurses who feel drained but don’t want to give up their career altogether.
With the technology we have now, it’s also easier for nurses to find more opportunities with better flexibility. There are online platforms and healthcare staffing apps where nurses can connect with staffing managers who offer open shifts. If you feel undecided about your long-term career, finding a temporary specialty area can help you stay clinically engaged so you don’t have to worry about losing experience or skills.
How to transition without starting over
One of the things nurses worry about the most when changing roles is their qualifications. What most don’t realize is that nursing skills are transferable across different healthcare settings, especially if the majority of your experience is bedside care.
In the roles mentioned above, your bedside care experience will be useful in patient advocacy, education, and care coordination. Managing several patients at once requires prioritization and project management.
Your skills in handling emergencies will come in handy during crisis response and decision-making, while your experience in communicating with families, physicians, and support staff will have sharpened your wits for stakeholder communication.
All these skills are useful when you move to case management, informatics, telehealth, education, quality improvement, occupational health, and numerous other nursing jobs.
Begin by searching for job posts outside your role and see which common skills are listed on requirements across different roles. Note how they compare to the skills you already have in your current role doing bedside care, and chances are they're more similar than you think.
Networking will also give you a real peek into alternative careers for nurses. LinkedIn groups, professional organizations, alumni circles, and nursing forums overflow with registered nurses working outside of traditional settings, and their advice or insights on which courses, credentials, or exposure would be helpful can be quite illuminating.
Targeted upskilling can certainly ease the transition. You might not necessarily need a full degree, but obtaining a certification in occupational health, case management, informatics, or cosmetology will go far in enhancing your appeal to prospective employers.
The ultimate objective isn’t to entirely reinvent who you are, but rather to reposition your current skills to match a new career.
The future of your nursing career
After some contemplation, you may realize that you’re not really done with the nursing profession; you just don’t like where you’re practicing it. This perspective will guide your choices.
What do you think led to your burnout? Is it the schedule, workload, physical demands, emotional toll, or lack of flexibility? What do you seek from your next position?
One good thing about nursing jobs is that they’re always in demand, so you’ll likely find opportunities in no time. Even if you find the next step towards change more challenging, you owe it to yourself to open up to what could be a better path.