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By Cynthia M. Piccolo (Career Questions)
dearCPTelehealthNursingTwo image

Dear Cindy: 
I am a Registered Nurse with an MSN degree in adult health (focus in diabetes). I desire to do a "re-entry" after a seven-year separation in corporate America. I am current on my license, and I have maintained my CEU requirements. Telenursing seems to be of strong interest to me, but how can I do this, and utilize my skills and knowledge in diabetes education? Is this possible? Please advise.

Sincerely,

TH

Dear TH: 

There are typically two types of telehealth/telephone triage positions available: those for generalists (i.e., who are able to take calls from those of any age or sex, with any type of condition) and those for specialists (e.g., at cardiac centers, children's hospitals) – "specialists" may mean either those who do telephone triage for a specific condition or range of conditions, or those who are involved with disease management.

Since you were a specialist (diabetes) before entering the corporate world, and since you have been out of healthcare/clinical practice for seven years, employers may be reluctant to hire you into generalist roles right away. Therefore, I suspect that your best options would likely be one of the following – look for opportunities at diabetes specialty centers or with outpatient programs for diabetes patients (particularly newly diagnosed patients), or get your hands back into clinical work and apply for generalist roles. You may want to use a functional or combination résumé, rather than a chronological résumé, and you should ensure that your résumé and cover letter foreground any soft or transferrable skills (e.g., critical thinking, ability to work under pressure, communication, customer service, comfort with technology) and the types of CEUs you took to maintain your license.In addition to those suggestions about places to look for leads which were made in the earlier query, you may also want to do search engine searches with terms such as "telephone triage diabetes," and look at vacancies posted by companies such as IntelliCare.

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