Achieving Mere Competence.

Finally catching up on the most recent Change of Shift, and I really dug this post by the Muse. The theory is that you become a professional nurse, make the uphill climb to becoming competent at what you do, and then you "squat":

You have mastered the ability and the workload of your position and compressed the actual hours needed to do the work into 10-12 hours/week. You now have 20-28 hours to wander and act like you’re doing something important

When what you should be doing is achieving more education and qualifications and reinventing your role. Every 5-7 years, in fact.

I think I was squatting in my old role as a critical care tech. My best days were when I was running all day long, for twelve hours, trying to keep up and manage all the tasks that needed to be done. But otherwise, on average days, all the work I needed to do could have been done in three or four hours. The rest of the time I chit-chatted, observed or assisted (which is nice, like getting paid for clinical), or...I don't know what I did. Probably stared off into space a lot. Thought about my next meal.

I don't want to do that as a nurse. I know nurses who are really good, but spend most of their time "charting", by which I refer to a really slow process of carefully and deliberately entering information into the computer charting software, in order to look somewhat occupied. Mind you, I would not mind getting paid an RN's wages to do that...but I'm still young and idealistic and I don't think I want to spend hours of my life doing that.

But I can already feel it: I never want to go to school again. Two years of working full time and schooling full time were horrible. Manageable, but I never want to do it again. Honestly I have no desire to get my BSN or my MSN, because they seem aloof and academic, studying nursing theories, and researching which nursing assessment scale with a goofy acronym (e.g. BUTTS versus ARSE) is better, and community health studies.

You know what I am attracted by? The idea of certifications outside of a school: the trauma nurse certification, the CCRN, etc. These still excite me, because they don't sound like school. They're technical, specific, and "real". And I could do this in the every 5-7 year timeline; transfer units, achieve a new certification, get new skills, and become a new nurse all over again.

And I still sometimes have fantasies of advanced practice nursing, in cardiology or trauma or some interesting field. But that would require...more school.