The Best Nursing Job I Ever Had

I have done a lot of things in my 16-year career as a nurse, nurse practitioner, and before that, 7 years as a pharmacy technician. From ICU (intensive care unit) to float nursing, from administration as CNL (clinical nurse leader) to education, and from home health to wound care, I have gotten to try a lot of types of work out. I typically stay in the same role for 3-5 years and then move on to a new role in order to continue developing my skills, learn more, and improve my economic opportunities. Of all the jobs I have had, though, the one that stands out as my favorite was CDCES or Certified Diabetes Care and Education Specialist.

Why did I love this job so much? There are several reasons. The first was I became a subject matter expert. I was so honored to be in a role that I could specialize in and really know it well in and out. You know that expression "Jack of all trades but master of none"? Yeah, that is how many of us nurses feel. We wear so many hats and have to know a little bit about everything. However, many of us feel like we are just dipping our toes in the different pools of knowledge. It has been awesome to have even physicians calling me for advice on how to best help their patients with diabetes as the diabetes guru.

A second reason I loved this job was I felt like I had more control over my day at work. Working at the bedside is really hard and stressful. Then you have the long hours and many have to work variable days and shifts. As a diabetes educator, I started out working Monday to Friday 8-5. However, I have never been fond personally of the Monday to Friday 8-5 and do miss the extra days off that I had as a bedside nurse to do things I loved like traveling, working out, gardening, and spending time with those I loved. I was fortunate that my boss was open to giving four 10-hour shifts per week a try. I had made a suggestion that we could work 4 days a week and have 3 off. After doing a pilot and seeing that it really benefited the patients, the department, as well as myself, almost everyone else jumped on board and wanted to work 4 ten-hour shifts. We still had weekends off, no nights, and we had holidays off.

I was able to plan out my day and had so much autonomy. I made my own patient assignments and decided who was most critically in need of diabetes education as well as most appropriate to receive the education.

A third benefit was collaborating with other diabetes educators at my facility and other facilities to create tools for diabetes management, protocols for our diabetes patients, education materials, and testing out new diabetes equipment. The icing on the cake was being able to travel for conferences nationally to meet other like-minded diabetes educators and refine our knowledge of diabetes management.

The pay was nice too. I was offered a decent salary of 42 dollars an hour and after 4 years in the role was making close to 44 dollars an hour. That was a really nice pay for a job that had no holidays, no weekends, no overtime, no call, and no nights.

Things really got interesting during the Covid pandemic when we decided to go virtual. Because of the obvious risks related to Covid and to minimize unnecessary people going into patient rooms, we made the decision to try to offer education to our patients remotely. This turned out to be a hit with many patients. How many times have you tried to go into a patient room to educate and the timing is not right because the doctor is coming in to talk about something or the transporter shows up to take the patient to a test or procedure? We were able to call the patient and set up a time to do a video call and answer any of their questions on diabetes as well as coach the patient on things such as meal planning, hypoglycemia treatment, and checking glucose levels.

There were of course challenges though. The biggest challenge was engaging patients to learn. Many patients said they knew a lot about diabetes but "just did not do what they were supposed to do." I never forced anything on a patient that was not ready to learn but always made myself available if they had questions later. I learned that the biggest barrier to diabetes self-care was psychological barriers. Stress, loss of a loved one, or dealing with other health issues were often cited reasons for patients not adhering to a healthy diabetes routine or taking medications as prescribed.

Instead of shaming patients, I made sure to cheer them on and celebrate the small victories they had. It was often possible to educate the families of patients with diabetes as well. Unfortunately, there is a lot of shame that is shown to people with diabetes from family and friends which does not help the situation.

I could go on all day talking about this amazing career. I ended up moving on to work in a diabetes clinic in another country, Sweden. Through these years I have maintained my certification as a CDCES. It has even helped me in my private life as it was I who discovered my mother's diabetes which likely saved her life. Through the knowledge I acquired as a CDCES we were able to get my mother's A1C from almost 11 to below 6.5 without the use of insulin.

If you are interested in learning more about this role and are thinking about pursuing it yourself, feel free to reach out. I offer one-on-one coaching for nurses to help them find their happy place.