WFH Nursing Looks Perfect Online…Here’s What It’s Really Like

Welcome to Club Nurse.

I'm Colton Lord, your host. By you being here today, it shows me that you are someone who wants to learn, grow, laugh, connect, and just let your emotions flow. We are here to share real stories and hear real life experiences from real people. You are not alone in this, and Club Nurse is here to show you that. Don't forget to follow the show and share today's episode with someone you love. Now let's dive into today's conversation.

Hello everybody. Welcome back to Club Nurse. My name is Colton Lord, the host of this podcast, and we've got a very hot topic to cover today. For, I don't know if anybody watches any of this on video, I don't know how much of the video we even upload, but like, you know, one day, one day we will have an aesthetically pleasing background. But for now it's my white wall with my neon Club Nurse sign and my head that covers the Club Nurse for most of the episode. But that's not the point. We've got some great content to cover today. I had asked people On my social media, on Instagram, that's @ColtonAllenLord or @NurseColton. You can find me at either of those places. You can also find the podcast on Instagram @club.nurse. So I had asked the audience about what are your questions about working from home and remote working? Because this is a hot topic in nursing. A lot of nurses are thinking about it. How do I get into the remote nursing role? Where do I find these jobs? What's the work-life balance like? What kind of skills do I need? What's the pay like? Do I get benefits? Like, there's so many questions that nurses have about working from home because I think that this is something that is enticing. I think a lot of nurses and people in general just want freedom. They want flexibility. And the thought of being able to possibly work from home is a big deal. People have kids, pets, just like so many obligations. And so I think that that thought of being able to have that and still get paid a nursing wage is a big deal for people. And rightfully so. So I'm going to give you— this is all my experience with working remote. I'm going to give you the truth and the pros and the cons. And maybe this will plant a seed for you to seek a remote role, a hybrid role. Or maybe this will be what you need to hear to be like, actually, I don't think that's really for me. I'm going to seek something else. So yeah, let's chat about it. Let's talk about it again. I had asked on my social medias, on my, on my stories to give me some questions. What do you want to know? And trust me, we got plenty. I actually was really surprised at the response. And actually, let me just kind of preface this with, I guess I wasn't that surprised. I was excited and happy that we had a response of people wanting to know things. But in my current role, so I actually work hybrid, and I'll get more into what I actually do, but I work a hybrid role. I work part-time, that's my scheduled hours. So I work 2 12-hour shifts a week. One I'm in the office, one I'm scheduled at home, and then anything else extra that I pick up I actually get to do from home for now. And so what I wanted to kind of touch on and how I know this is, this is something that nurses are so passionate about is there's actually a lot of drama going on with my workplace. And I'm not gonna disclose exactly where I work, but there is a lot of drama going on with the nursing staff and how to make this remote nursing equitable. And that is, I think, the issue with the hybrid model is it's like, you know, who's getting to work from home when? Why are some people getting more shifts than others? And there's a lot that goes into it. We don't need to get into the nitty-gritty of the drama with the workplace drama. But what I have noticed is that it's something that people are very passionate about.

Yeah.

especially again, nurses being able to have this flexibility. So let's talk about it. So let's start this episode off with just some personal questions that people had about my role specifically. And the first question was, how did you land this job and what do you love or hate about it? So how I landed this job, it's kind of funny. I actually wasn't looking for a remote nursing role. That wasn't really on my radar. I was working in the ER. I was a travel nurse. I had taken a staff job. That's a lie. That's a lie. Let me backpedal. I was still a local travel nurse at this hospital. And they basically what happened was my contract was technically rotating to days and nights. But I, again, I had been traveling here for almost 2 years and I had never had to rotate to nights. They had let me just keep my day status. I am not a night shift nurse. I will not work night shift. That is a hard boundary for me. And call me what you want. Call me a diva, prima donna.

Diva.

Dramatic, entitled. I really don't care. I will not work the night shift, and here's why. I've tried it. My body does not respond well, and it takes a huge toll on my health mentally and physically. And for me personally, I do not feel like I am willing to trade any aspect of my life in, in that drastic of a way— my health— for a job and for money. And I get it. Not everybody has that exact option. I think actually, I personally think that everybody has some control over working day or night. It depends though, the more specific you need or want for a job, like if you're coming out of nursing school and you specifically want to work in the ER at this specific hospital and all they're offering you is night shift, then you gotta do it. But if you have more flexibility in what you want, then you really do have options. If you have other hospitals that are on your radar, other specialties, and you really don't wanna work night shift, there's a way around it. But again, the more flex or the more specific you're getting in the job that you want, the less opportunities you have and the more likelihood that you may have to work some night shifts. But for me, I'm like, this is a, this is a hard stop. I will not do it. I will not work night shift. So they rotated me for a month. I don't even know if it was a month. I got a schedule where I was on some night shifts and I was like, okay, I got to figure something out. I cannot do this. I did. I did show up for my couple night shifts that I was scheduled, but I, I really was struggling through it. So basically, I had kind of put it out there into the ether, into the universe, if you will, that I was thinking about, oh, how nice would it be to be able to work from home? You know, at that time, kind of my social media life was kind of taking off and I was trying to figure out a way to be able to focus more on that. And again, I didn't really look for any roles. I just had thought about it, put it out there. As this was happening, a nurse that I worked with at the hospital in the ER was talking about at the nurse station how she had just landed a job. That was hybrid and that she was doing in the office. And let me also say, I was also very burnt out of the ER at this time. And when I say burnt out, like, I mean burnt out. I don't mean the, the buzzword that we all throw around when we're just tired and need like a couple days off work. Like, I was burnt out. And I think this is a result, a direct result of working 48-hour contracts through the pandemic, continuing that into post-pandemic, and just working myself really to the bone without really taking a break and taking care of myself. And anyway, my colleague, she had this opportunity. She's like, oh, I think they're hiring. And so I had applied for the job through her. She was kind of a reference for me. I saw the job was posted on our company's website through our hospital system. I went on, I applied for the job, and I ultimately ended up getting it. And again, it's kind of funny, when I was interviewing, they wanted me to work a rotating day and night schedule, 36 hours a week. And I was like, no, I'm not doing that. I can't even work night shift in the ER, girl. You think I'm going to sit at a computer overnight? Absolutely not. So again, that's a personal preference. Some people love the night shift. It works for them. They have kids. It just— it works great for their life. For me personally, it just does not work. And so I ended up actually getting passed up for the job initially. And then they had offered me— they had kind of come back around and said, actually, we can— we can offer you a per diem position. So I went on as per diem. Within a couple of weeks of me working there, they ended up coming up to me saying, what will you do? Will you take a part-time role and rotate day evenings? Sure. I'm happy to work a midshift. I prefer a full-time day schedule, but midshift is fine with me. So I do a lot of 11 to 11 work. Okay, so that's what I do. I work at a transfer center for a hospital system in Massachusetts. And basically what that means is I am in charge. I'll give you just a little a little bit of an example of what it looks like when somebody— like when I take a case at my job. So when I say transfer center, that basically means if there is a situation at a hospital that the patient needs to be transferred for. And this could be a myriad of reasons. This could be a patient and family preference. This could be the patient needs higher level of care. This could be they need a specific procedure that the hospital cannot offer. This could be continuity of care. The patient seeks their cancer care through our hospital system. They're in the ER at an outside hospital, so they want to transfer in to continue on with their care to keep it consistent. There are several reasons. There's more than even that, but that's the gist. And some of it really is just like they just want to come and be in our hospital system. No other reason. And for also many reasons, we accept or decline these patients. The doctors accept or decline them. It really is a very in-depth process that I'm not going to get into. So that is what I do. And basically what my job entails is triaging the patient appropriately and following my company's algorithms to get the patient the care that they need or declining the patient if it's not appropriate, if we don't have capacity. So let me just give you a little example. If I am working, these are 12-hour shifts. And so typically I'll work 11 to 11. I get on as soon as I log on and clock in, I'm on the clock. So if I'm not taking over for somebody, I start fresh. If I am taking over for somebody, they will hand off their patients to me just like working in a hospital setting. And if I'm at home, they just call me. They give me their handoff on the patients assigned to them. If they are— if we're both in office, it's literally just like you would give report in a hospital. So once I get that, if I, if I get a phone call, I answer it. It's a doctor from an ER. At an outside facility, they're like, "Hello, my name is Dr. So-and-so. I have this patient." They're in the depending if it is something that is life-threatening. The doctor is usually panicking, and trust me when I say when I first got this job, I was like, "Whatever, working from home, like working in an office. This can't be stressful." Wrong, wrong. This actually is a very stressful job at times, and you are really. Like the person who is not controlling the emotions of these providers, but you are the middle person. And if you start to get worked up, they get more worked up. I'm telling you, the energy is palpable through the phone. So say they call, this patient's having a STEMI. Let's just keep it simple. They call, patient's having a STEMI. They need emergent cath lab now. So, okay, I take the call. I connect them with our interventional cardiologist. They take a look at the EKG. Yep, it's a STEMI. Get them over here now. Let the outside hospital know, okay, we can accept to X facility. Please arrange transportation. Make sure you give us the ETA so we can update that and activate the cath lab. Call— we let the ER nurse, charge nurse know, hey, the patient's coming. They're supposed to be going straight to the cath lab. If transportation happens to come through the ED, just letting you know they need to go direct to the cath lab.

Okay.

Call the ICU nurse administrator. Hey, just so you know, patient's coming with a STEMI going to the cath lab. Probably will need an ICU bed after the cath. Okay, great. Awesome. And then that's what we do. We send out the notification, the page that there's a STEMI coming, and then we wait for the patient to get there. Again, there's a lot more to it and each case is so individual, but basically my job is I have to, I have to triage the patient and follow the algorithm, the pathway that is per our protocol to get the patient the care that they need. And with that, it does take some experience. Most of the nurses who work in my department have a background in ER or ICU because it does require critical care experience in the sense that we have to, you know, we're triaging these patients and a lot of them are very complex. We have to be able to, you know, take a call and be like, oh, this sounds like it needs to go to the ICU. Let me page the ICU doctor, or this needs to go to this surgeon. Like, you really have to understand the pathophysiology, the specialties. And so this job specifically that I have does take a little bit of experience in critical care to understand the disease process and to make sure you are not wasting time calling the incorrect providers or that you aren't, you know, missing something and declining a patient who may really need higher level of care. And it's not perfect. There are times where, you know, I call a surgeon and they're like, oh no, this is not, this wouldn't come to me. You need to call somebody else. And that's okay. That's just part of the job. We're not perfect. We don't know everything. Hello, it's nursing. And it really is collaborative, just like working in the hospital. You know, there's, it's a lot of times of, you know, bouncing things off our colleagues. Hey, like, what do you think about this? You know, where would this go? Similar to when you're working in an emergency room. Now, the caveat to that is when you're working remote from home, you are alone. We do have like a Teams messaging system where we are messaging back and forth. I do have a Like, I'll put this in kind of quotes, like charge nurse who we can call and, you know, ask questions to. But the expectation is if you are going to work from home, you need to be, you know, proficient and knowledgeable and efficient and understand the process to get the patients where they need to go. That doesn't mean you can't ask questions, but you can't be calling every 5 minutes, hey, help me, help me, help me. So yeah, you have to be able to work independently from home. So that is what I do as a work-from-home nurse. I I work for a transfer center, getting people from all over the place into higher level of care, mostly to get them the care that they need. Had a great question about licensing, which is a really, really good question. They said, how does licensing work if you live in Boston but work in a different state? So from my understanding and from my specific job, if I, if I was doing my job full-time remote, And I lived in a different state, say I lived in Michigan, I could do that, but my licensing would be in the state of Massachusetts because that is where my healthcare institution is, is in Massachusetts. So even if I lived wherever else, I need to be licensed in the state of Massachusetts in order to have that job. And this is actually very interesting. I had seen, we had spoken about an article previously. I covered it on Nurse News, which if you don't follow along on the Club Nurse podcast, we do cover Breaking Nurse News, news in healthcare every week. We usually post those at the very beginning of the week. Typically Mondays or Tuesdays is when those news episodes do come out. And I remember we talked about how there is now a program in the Philippines where they are able to work remotely in the Philippines, but on a license in the US. So wherever that company is based, even if you're living in the Philippines and you're working for a company based out of California, then you need your California state license in order to practice in that state because That's technically like the jurisdiction that you are practicing in. And that is my understanding of that. All right, so let's move on to the next, this next bucket of questions about how to get remote jobs. Like, where do I find these that are like actual legit remote jobs? The ones that I applied to, they're not answering me back. Why? So let's dive into it. So getting, again, I'm not gonna sit here and act like I am a professional on finding remote work. Like I said, I really kind of fell into this role, heard word of mouth, and I just applied to it. Kind of had a personal reference from a colleague who already worked in the facility or in the system, and that's how I got my role. But I do, I have had conversations and I have talked to people who are in this remote space, and I think that I have some input to give you that might help you kind of navigate this. Remote nursing world and how to find the job that suits you the best. I know one nurse that I knew when I lived in Arizona who works for Epic, the, you know, like the charting company that we use, the documentation company. I mean, I don't even— I don't know what you would actually call them. They're obviously— Epic is more than just documenting records, healthcare records. I don't know the umbrella that Epic would fall under as far as like an industry. But either way, she worked for Epic. She lived in Arizona. And Epic is based out of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. And so she does, she would have to fly to Milwaukee, I think a couple times a year, maybe once a quarter. I don't know exactly, but she worked in Arizona and she works in the IT department. And I do know that IT nursing is, does require, I think, a little bit more training or specialty, maybe some more education. And those jobs are a little bit harder to find from my understanding and from the conversations that I have had, because it does require a more specific skill set versus just, you know, clinical knowledge. But it's an option. So maybe go look on the Epic website, see what you can find. I know a nurse practitioner who works for Weight Watchers. You know, these are big brand companies that, that you can work for. And when you log on to like Indeed and Glassdoor, you'll see like all these jobs like CVS or just like these random jobs. But again, they are out there. And my recommendation To you on how to get a remote job is I had an episode with David Rosenbeck. If you scroll back to June, the June 25th episode. So if you're listening on Apple Podcasts, if you scroll back, it has the date next to each episode. Go to the one from June 25th of this year. Or if you're on thenurse.org/clubnurse website, just scroll down. You'll see it. It's with David Rosenbeck. Go Beyond the Bedside is His company that he co-founded, and I'm, I'm blanking on the co-founder's name. I'm so sorry. But they have created a really great platform, and this I recommend because you do have to pay a small fee of something like $15 to $25, somewhere in there. But what they're doing is they're saving you time. I will pay that any day to save me time because if you have looked for remote nursing, you already know how miserable it is. And how daunting it is to log on to something like Glassdoor or on LinkedIn or Indeed, like these, and you like look for these jobs and it just like throws thousands of jobs at you. And even when you're filtering things like filter by, I want remote work and like this type of location or this type of pay, this field, like it still throws out like thousands of jobs at you. And like, that's way too saturated. Who knows if those are even legit? I'm sure some of them are. And I'm sure that people do land jobs that way. But that just doesn't seem like the most efficient way to do it. And it seems like a very quick way to burn out looking for— oh my gosh, I hate the word burnout. I really do. It just seems like a way to get— feel defeated from looking for these remote jobs when it's that saturated of a market. And, you know, who knows how long they've been posted or if they're even legit. So my recommendation, Go Beyond the Bedside. That's what it's called with David Rosenberg. Literally Google Go Beyond the Bedside. Bedside, go to their website and sign up for what they have. Because basically what they do is like they are filtering it down to like 25 active jobs and sending it to you. And that's like a lot better than having like 2,000 sent to you on Indeed or Glassdoor. And again, you do have to pay a small fee to get their services, but it is worth it. If you are serious about finding remote work, it is so worth going to Go Beyond the Bedside. And again, they are not sponsoring this at all. Like I am just telling you from any of the information that I have seen out there, that is the best place to go to get that kind of remote work. If you're looking to, you know, maybe look on social media for some more resources, they do have an Instagram, Go Beyond the Bedside. But I also highly recommend following these Instagram accounts @wholelifenurse. She has been on there forever talking about remote nursing and working from home. And she also will curate a list and send to you like remote nursing, biotech jobs, low stress side hustles. Like, just let it—

making—

giving you the permission to just think outside the box. And, you know, how can I maybe keep my bedside job while doing some kind of side hustle? Or, you know, how can I make this like a little transition into remote work? I'm not sure exactly how, or, you know, what I want to do. Go follow these people. Like, @WholeLifeNurse, she really puts out great content. She also curates a list that she sends to you, uh, of real-time remote nurse jobs that you can find out there. If you follow nurses like @thatnursedaisy, she really talks about, you know, the benefits of working from home and how it's changed her life and her stress levels and just like the lifestyle she gets to live because she's not wired and working in the ER and doing all these crazy stressful things. And that's okay to accept that.

You—

Oh gosh, like I think as nurses we get so caught up in this Almost like we have to be stressed. Like, this is just the nature of the job. We have to put ourselves out there and let— just, you know, this is just going to be my life. I have to be stressed. I have to be anxious all the time. I have to show up for my patients. This is the— my civil duty. This is what I signed up for as a nurse. No, you really don't. You need to let that go. You have to let go of that identity and that feeling that you have that, like, I owe this career Something, because you really don't. There is such honor in taking care of people. It is such a privilege to have the knowledge and the skills of being a nurse. It is such— do you realize that being a nurse is a very particular and high-skilled profession? What we do every single day requires precision, knowledge, and just these skills that you don't— you can't just like go in and get on-the-job training and learn how to be a nurse. Like this required us to get, you know, a legit education. We had to pass a really difficult licensing exam, and then we had to get into the workforce. And once you get there, it's like a whole nother level of I have no idea what I'm doing. And then over time you learn these things, and when you look back, you're like, wow, look back at yourself. No matter if you've been a nurse for a year, if you've been a nurse for 10 years, just look back at the progression that you've made to get where you've gotten. You have skills and you have knowledge to do things Outside of only working the bedside. And let me just say this, there is nothing wrong with working at the bedside. There's nothing wrong with it, really. I'm not here to demonize working at the bedside or make it seem like this is like such a terrible thing to do. It is a beautiful thing to do, to work at the bedside. And if it is what you love, that is okay. If you need a break from it, that is also okay. And I think something to point out is something I had to really tell myself when I transitioned from working full-time at the bedside to taking a, you know, job that was— I can't stand the term soft nursing either, but when you kind of get out of the bedside and do something else, that nursing will always be there. The ER is not going anywhere. The ICU is not going anywhere. The OR, med-surg, labor and delivery, it's not going anywhere. They're going to need us. Yes, AI is coming up. They're not going to replace the physical nurse. I will throw— I will say that bold statement. AI is not going to replace the physical nurse at the bedside. So take the, you know, take the jump and take the break. It's okay. You are allowed to do that. You are allowed to take that break and don't even look at it actually as a break because you're still going to be working, but you can take the break. What I mean from the bedside, it's going to be there if you want to go back. But if you're interested, if you're looking for a little bit of a lifestyle change, you need to maybe regulate that nervous system, I highly recommend looking into it. Like, what's the worst that's going to happen? I think for most facilities, you can go per diem at your bedside job if you're afraid to fully rip off that Band-Aid, because that's what I did. I went per diem and then I eventually was like, okay, I'm not really showing up anymore. I'm going to quit before, like, I burn this bridge of just like ghosting, ghosting them. So that's what ended up happening with me. I quit my ER job and guess what? I'm thinking about somehow getting myself back into that bedside role eventually. But I'm not making this quick decision to go do it right now. Okay, so yeah, another question about getting remote jobs. Somebody said, all the ones I've applied to, I've never heard back. Why? So I kind of just talked about this. It's probably because you are looking on sites that feed you thousands and thousands and thousands of jobs. They're very general. There's a lot of saturation, a lot of candidates. That's like LinkedIn. LinkedIn's actually not the worst place, but like Glassdoor, Indeed, those kinds of sites, they're going to just give you a ton. So I will say it again. Go check out Go Beyond the Bedside, created by David Rosenbeck and his co-founder. I'm so embarrassed I can't remember his co-founder's name. He's actually not a nurse, but the two of them together, they've created this great platform. So go take a look at that. Okay. The part that we had so many questions on that I know people are so curious about, and it is obviously very important. It's one of the most important things, if not the most important thing about looking for a job. But what are the pay and the benefits? I had a lot of questions about this. Somebody said, what is the pay like for remote jobs? Again, I can speak for myself. I know this is very— there is a wide spectrum. This is just like working at the bedside. I think a lot of this really depends too on where the company is located. And I want to say this. Let me say this about my job. My job, I cannot do my job anywhere. So I can't just like take my laptop with me, go on a vacation and do this job. Okay. I need a full setup. I have 2 monitors. I have my keyboard. I have then the laptop that plugs into the 2 monitors. I have to be hardwired into an internet modem. And then I also have the big, the big like phones that you see at the nurse's station. I have that. I have like a whole nother box that I think is for like, I actually don't even know what it's for. Maybe security. A lot of things plug into it. Like it's a whole setup I have to have in order to do this job that I do whenever I'm working from home. There are jobs that I know that is just you and your laptop. It's kind of self-paced, self-directed. You're you've you know you've got your caseload. You're doing things. This job is different. This job that I have, I like I said, I take the calls. I have the patients assigned to me, so I may have four or five patients. I may have one assigned to me at a time. It's just like working at the bedside. Who am I prioritizing? Who needs my attention right now? And again, that's where the clinical knowledge comes in. That's where my ER brain comes in because. Because if you have 4 patients in the ER, you know, you, you really in your head have to say, okay, well, who needs my attention now? And it literally is back to the basics like ABCs or what is going to be the most life-threatening right this second. And that's what you're following in your head with, with the kind of job that I have. I don't— it's not like a case management role. I'm not like a nurse navigator. It's very different than I think most other remote nursing jobs out there. But with that being said, my pay is a lot different. And let me— again, I'm speaking from my experience. My remote— I should say my hybrid. I'm not full remote. My hybrid position is not part of the union, whereas my job at the bedside was part of the union. Pros and cons to that. I think overall unions are great if it's a good nursing union, and I learned that through Nurse Erica. Because my knowledge on unions is not the best, but I will give you my real comparison of my pay. So my hybrid nursing job, I have a base pay of about $70 an hour. $70, 7-0. My base pay in the emergency department was around $47 an hour. Okay, that's a huge difference. And that's me. I've been a nurse for 6, almost 7 years. That is a huge difference. What is that? $20, it's like $23 an hour difference. Hello. Okay. And I'm not someone that's like, go for the money, go for the money, go for the money. But like, hello, this is a no-brainer for me. I can go stress myself out, work in the ER, run around like crazy, get kicked, spit on, all the things that, you know, happen in the ER. Or I can work this remote job that, again, this job does get very stressful. It comes with its cons for sure. But $23 an hour difference, girl, no. So that's my experience. I know that that's not across the board. I don't know if you're working a lot of these, you know, maybe case management jobs from home. I don't know exactly what they pay. When you see the listings online, they will give you ranges. But what I think is if you're looking for flexibility and you factor in costs of like having to get to work and, you know, if you're buying lunch every day when you're out at work and just like start factoring all these things in. I am sure that you can find something very comparable, if not more, to what— than what you're making in the ER. And I think with nursing, what people need to get more on board with— don't pigeonhole yourself. Like, you can do multiple things. And I am such an advocate for— I know that Hospice Nurse Julie has talked so much about this. If you don't follow her platform, you should. But girl, being part-time or per diem is such a luxury. And when I say I work part-time, I am contracted, I guess you could say, 24 hours a week. Okay. I always, almost always work 40+ hours a week at that job, but it is so much more flexible. It is so much more in my control. And, you know, for example, this week I'm working 48 hours. Next week I'm going to do 24. Like, hello there. That is so much more flexible. And the best thing is if next week during my 24, after I've had a couple of days off, if they send— because they will, they'll send text messages and say, hey, Somebody called out, we have some needs. Can somebody pick up 12 hours here? And I'll be like, oh, well, I don't know if I can do full 12 today, but I can do 8 here, or I can do 4 here, or I'm happy to help in this way. And typically that's received because at least you're helping for X amount of hours to help with the load. Sometimes if it's like super busy as far as the volume goes, same thing. They'll send out a text message, hey, we need some help. Can somebody log on from home really quickly? And that is such a benefit to working from home and having the setup at home is when they have needs, We really are able to get on and help out whenever we can. Huge luxury. Huge luxury. So yeah, one of the questions, is there a big pay cut for remote jobs? In my experience, absolutely not. Again, this is very dependent, I think, on where you live, what you already make, and what kind of nursing, remote nursing job you're looking for. Somebody said, can you make as much as a hospital salary? I've already answered that. Absolutely. What about benefits? Fully benefited. This job that I have offers full benefits. Contribution to 401 or 403. I don't know exactly which one. And if you ask me the difference of those 2, I would tell you I have no idea. But they do contribute to that full healthcare benefits, the whole shebang. Okay. I've already been yapping for a little while here. So let's kind of run through these last few questions that I had from the audience. And again, thank you so much for these questions. So what skills are essential for remote nursing work? I really talked about this already with my job specifically. Triage is really essential. Just that critical care knowledge and background for my job specifically has been essential. And I think the funny part—I don't know if it's actually funny, but I find it a little bit humorous—is I'm not de-escalating patients anymore. I'm really de-escalating doctors because, like I said, when a doctor is calling from northern Maine with a patient who has an aneurysm that's on the verge of rupturing and they need to get them down to Boston, of course they're like. Freaking out. And then we're trying to get them in touch with the cardiac surgeon and they're, you know, oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Like it's a whole thing. And so the doctors are sometimes freaking out. If you— sometimes the, the doctor that's on the accepting end in our facilities, maybe not the most approachable. They think this is maybe stupid or they have their own thoughts about it. And you're the one that's in the middle. Like, you know, I'm just communicating to you, this is your decision. You are the doctor. You can do whatever you feel is necessary. I'm just doing my job by presenting you the information. So really a lot of it is like deescalating that. And I did, I had a case the other day where a doctor was kind of giving me some attitude about why I was calling him about something or why the hospital didn't do this. And I said, doctor, I really am just delivering you this information. I don't know why they're doing XYZ. I'm happy to conference you in with them so that you can have that conversation with them. But I don't know. I am just the messenger, and don't shoot the messenger. So really, it is a lot of de-escalating the doctors. And what I have learned is a lot of doctors have no emotional regulation skills, and that's the truth. What kind of nursing specialty is required to get this kind of job? I already told you, mostly ICU/ED backgrounds with my job specifically, because it's a lot of triaging critical What types of remote jobs are there? I feel like nursing school focused only on the bedside, and that is for good reason. I think straight out of nursing school, a remote nursing role is probably not the best idea. Even if you're doing a remote case management job, I think you need to have some level of clinical experience or, or in-hospital case management experience to be able to do these kind of jobs at home. Let's just be real. Healthcare, working in the medical field. It's it's its own language. It is, and you learn the basics in school, but you've got to be you've got to be around it. You've got to be hearing things constantly to to learn the language. It's like learning Spanish. You can learn it all you want on Duolingo or whatever Rosetta Stone, but until you're immersed in the culture, you're likely you may know the basics, but you're not going to really like cling onto it and fully understand it until you're. you're engulfed in that, you're in that environment. So there's a reason that it's not really available for new grad nurses, in my opinion. Any remote CRNA needs? Can LPNs and LVNs do remote nursing work? And my answer is I have no idea. I am certain that there— I'm not certain, actually. I think there probably are some for LPNs, LVNs. I have no idea for CRNAs. I really don't. I do know there are nurse practitioner Work from home roles, several of those actually, especially with like telehealth. And like I said, I know a nurse practitioner who works for Weight Watchers. So those roles are out there for sure. CRNA, LPNs, LVNs, I have no idea. All right, let's wrap it up with these last couple of questions about lifestyle and work-life balance. So how do you prevent distractions at home when working remotely? It's not easy. It's really not. And especially when— because, you know, of course, when you're home, you're like, oh, maybe I can do the laundry or mop my floors or My dogs need to be taken out, or, oh, social media. It is hard to stay focused, focused. But with the nature of my job, I have no choice. I have to stay focused. Again, I'm dealing with very high acuity, critical patients. And the phone rings all day long. And mine are 12-hour shifts, like I said. And so it really— it's equivalent to working in the ER in the sense of it's busy. You can't just disappear. You can take little breaks. Tell the chat, I'll be right back. Got to go to the bathroom, taking my dogs out, going to lunch, whatever it is. But yeah, you can't just like walk away either and take your lunch. I have to, I have to have somebody covering me similar to the hospital. And again, this is for my, my job specifically. So yeah, it's, it's not, it is, it can be difficult if you're not like self-motivated, self being, being able to be like self-directed in your day. I feel like it could pose some challenges to people in that sense. But that's just— that's a personal thing, girl. You got to work on that. You have to be able to minimize distractions and, you know, focus in if that's something that you really want to do. That's all I got on that one. Do you feel like you can never leave work at work when working from home? No. Again, my job specifically, I'm not doing work off hours. I'm clocked in. If I work at 11:00 AM, I'm off at 11:30 PM. I've handed off my patients to the next nurse. And I'm clocking out and I'm like, okay, bye, I'm out of here. And then that's it. I don't, I don't have work on my off hours for my job in particular. There may be other jobs like that where you feel pressured to maybe work off the clock. Not my job, not at all. All right, so I hope that I answered most of your questions about working from home and remote work. I think really to sum it up, I gave you a lot of information about the job I do working as a transfer center nurse. If I think there's one thing for you to really take home today from this is it is possible to work from home and be a remote nurse. The best place to look, go Beyond the Bedside, check them out. They will give you really accurate, active job listings that are not just full of fluff. And don't be afraid to lose your skills and feel like you're not a real nurse if you're not working at the bedside and doing Chest compressions, pounding on people's chests every day. You're a real nurse, queen. No matter what you're doing, people need help in several different ways. You don't have to earn your stripes by really destroying your mental health every single day. Okay, yes, we need the bedside nurses, but people are going to do it. Trust me. Less people are doing it because the nature of the job. But if you don't— you don't have— you don't owe your life to this profession. And I will say that you do not owe your life to this profession. All right, you owe your life to you. And I think that more of us need to take control of that and understand that if we aren't taking care of ourselves, one day we will become the patient, and we will become the patient a lot earlier if we are not taking care of ourselves first. Okay, so that's my message today. I really hope you found some, some kind of nugget that you needed in this episode. Maybe I planted a seed for you and to maybe let go of that fear just a little bit. And gave you some good, good tips, tricks, and knowledge of the remote hybrid nursing world. All right. My name's Colton Lord. Again, this is the Club Nurse Podcast. Thank you so much for listening. Follow us on socials. You can find all of, all of these articles, all these episodes, and all of our nurse news and most up-to-date breaking healthcare nursing news on nurse.org/news. Be sure to follow us on Instagram. I am @nursecolton, @club.nurse, my personal Instagram @coltonallenlord. I know that's a lot. That's where you'll stay up to date with us on, on all of the work that we're doing. And of course, @nurse_org. They really provide a lot of really good information for nurses and healthcare workers. So thank you guys, and we'll see you next time. Bye.

From the bottom of my heart, I wanted to thank you for being here at Club Nurse.

I hope you gained something valuable From today's episode, and if you did, remember to share this episode with someone that you love.

Follow me on socials at Nurse Daddies or Colton Lord 17, and be sure to follow nurse.org to stay informed with all of the hottest healthcare topics. Until next time, take care of yourself the way you take care of everyone else.

Love ya. Bye.