Can a Practical Nurse Find Employment as a Telephonic Nurse?

Nursing careers are some of the jobs that are in highest demand right now. This demand increases as people's healthcare and medical needs continue to grow. In many areas, there are shortages of qualified nursing professionals. This has urged healthcare and insurance providers to get creative and come up with unique and better ways to recruit nursing staff in order to meet their patient needs.

There are now more opportunities than ever before for nursing staff to work remotely either by telephone or computer. The patient-care experience of an LPN along with the medical knowledge gained in that profession makes a great skill set for a medical call center job.

Just a phone call away

The job of a Telephonic Nurse is pretty straightforward. Your main duty is talk to patients on the phone. You will give them guidance and support for their varied health care needs. This may include connecting members to new care resources through referrals. You will also be providing vital education to patients to direct their actions and decisions. Every call you are on is important to help members take charge of their own healthcare. Connecting with you will promote positive change in their lifestyles and lead them to live healthier, more fulfilling lives.

Work from home

From the nurse’s perspective, telephonic nursing is a rewarding and flexible career path. Many of the nurses in these positions work from home, which helps them maintain a healthy life-work balance. Every shift, the nurses get to interact one-on-one with members, and they find it very fulfilling to make a difference in these people’s lives and health status. Some options include:

Telephone triage - A telephone triage nurse is generally a true  work-at-home position. Like on-call nurses that makes visits, this can be very unpredictable, so you may be receiving calls one after another all night from 5 p.m. to when the office opens the next morning, or you may only have a couple of calls. The typical schedule for many health and hospice companies is seven days on and seven days off.

After-hours nurse - An after-hours nurse works from their home, taking calls from the telephone triage nurse when calls from patients come in needing assistance. If the telephone triage nurse can’t handle the problem over the phone, he or she will call the nurses working after-hours to have them make a visit and address the issue. Nurses who work during after-hours shifts typically do not have a patient caseload. This means they usually don’t to attend patient care conferences or make regularly scheduled visits.

Nurse hotline - If you want an alternative to doing telephone triage for a home health or hospice agency, you can also work from home for an insurance company nurse hotline. These hotlines are open 24 hours a day every single day of the year. This means a daytime schedule is possible. But, expect to begin by working the night shift for a while until a highly coveted daytime position opens up.

Remote Quality Improvement Nurse - Quality Improvement Nurses review hospitals' nursing record documentation for completeness, accuracy, and appropriate level coding. Nurses in these positions also tend to be tasked with educating the staff on the importance of proper documentation and coding practices. Quality improvement nurses may be required quite a bit. Some job postings say the positions require up to 70 to 80 percent travel time

Job availability and pay

Salaries and benefits for telephonic nurses are very competitive, and openings exist nationwide.  These positions can be full-time or part-time, and there are openings in nearly every zip code. According to website Payscale.com, A Telephonic Nurse earns an average wage of $28.81 per hour. The yearly salary can range from $44,204 - $89,182. The bottom line is LPNs have options.  And those options can result in options that include all of the rewards of nursing without family sacrifices. Contact Athena Career Academy to get your nursing career on track.