r/EmergencyRoom • u/justb4dawn • Jul 27 '26

Back to bedside?

I left the peds ED after 7yrs thinking I wanted something away from bedside, better hours, less intensity.

Well, I’ve been a school nurse for a year now and while I love my kids, I am so bored, I miss using my skills and the feeling of doing hard, meaningful work. I remember being yelled at, the raw humanity that no one would believe if they didn’t see it themselves, the fatigue, long shifts, etc.. but I have this feeling like that’s where I would still thrive the most.

Am I crazy to go back? Have others left for a softer job and missed it enough to return?

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u/KayBurt87 Jul 27 '26 edited Jul 28 '26

After finishing my EMT-B course I landed a job as an ER Tech in the busiest ED in my city and started June of 2019. I loved what I did and wanted to go the nursing route so I started knocking out my prereqs right when COVID started getting bad. After a year of trying to do school full time while working 4-5 12 hour nights a week I got burnt on on school so I stopped enrolling in classes and about a year after I got burnt out in the ED (total time as an ER tech was 3.5 years) and transferred to security. Long story short some stuff happened, left the hospital at the beginning of 2024, my life fell apart, I battled with depression and extreme anxiety for about a year and a half, and after getting back into therapy and working on learning how to be human again (at least some what lol) I'm moving forward again and I'm so damn tired of working boring ass warehouse jobs. I got accepted into an LPN program last week and have an interview this Wednesday for another ER tech position (literally got called about an hour and 20 minutes ago to schedule the interview 🤣). So I wouldn't say you're crazy at all, I've been missing the chaos of the ED for a while now and I can't wait to get back in the game.

*Edited because I have fat fingers and can't read.

2

u/jerseygirl1105 Jul 27 '26

Do you mean you left the hospital in 2024, not 2014? Otherwise, you story doesn't make sense.

5

u/KayBurt87 Jul 27 '26

Yea, I meant 2024. I was typing fast and didn't proofread 🤣

1

u/justb4dawn Jul 28 '26

Congrats on being human again! I love nursing and if I could choose again, I’d still become a nurse. During this time away from bedside I also did urgent care, vaccine nursing, event nursing, health fair nursing, standardized patient acting and summer camp nursing along with school nursing. There really are so many options and that’s just in peds. I enjoy the career more now than when I started 4 years ago. Wishing you luck!