There are many reasons to consider leaving bedside nursing — maybe you’re burnt out, physically exhausted, experiencing a harmful culture at work, or tired of working a shift-based schedule. But is it time to leave patient care entirely? And will you lose the nursing skills you’ve worked so hard to gain?
The decision of whether to leave the bedside is one that at least 40% of nurses consider each year. To help you make this decision and understand your options, we’ve created a decision-making framework to guide your thinking.
Why Nurses Leave the Bedside
First, let’s explore the research on why nurses intend to leave the profession. Nursing has notoriously high turnover rates — some estimates show that 1 in 3 new graduates will leave within the first two years of employment. There are many reasons nurses choose to leave, and the decision is usually multifactorial, but a lack of work-life balance and poor working conditions are often key elements.
Occupational factors for leaving include:
- Low job satisfaction
- Workplace safety issues
- Organization and management issues
- Tension and bullying in the workplace
- Mandatory overtime and overwork
- Low salaries
- Long shifts and lack of schedule control
- High expectations at work
- Staff shortages
- Lack of advancement opportunities
Personal factors for leaving include:
- Age
- Work experience
- Inadequate training or education
- Self-confidence
- Errors due to heavy workload
- Difficulty with managing clinical conditions
- Family obligations
If you read the above list and are noting several factors you identify with, you’re likely in the first phase of considering a professional change. Employees rarely leave a job impulsively; most think about the decision over time, move towards an intent to leave, and consider their options first. If you’re in this consideration process, you’ve come to the right place.
Real Nurses’ Decisions to Leave the Bedside
We asked our nurse writers about why they chose to take a temporary or permanent break from bedside nursing. Here’s what they had to say:
Bonnie Wiegand:
“I went straight from high school to college, and graduated from a four-year BSN program. I started working full-time on a med/surg floor a few days after graduation, and then ended up quitting a couple years in, when I was still pretty young. It was due to a bunch of factors, and ultimately felt like the right move for me — something I had to do for my happiness and well-being.
In part, I felt confused about treatments and whether they were working, and I was drawn to all the psychological and holistic aspects of health that seemed to form a backdrop to some of the immediate needs we worked with in the hospital. I had a lot of questions! Also, there was a lot I wanted to explore in the world, and about myself, so moving away from a linear career path and into more uncertainty felt right for me at the time.”
Marie Hasty
“I left bedside nursing after about two and a half years of night shift in acute care. I’d been working on a heart failure unit when COVID hit, and we quickly shifted focus to those patients. COVID had a massive impact on me and all of my colleagues. I ended up transitioning into the MICU, also caring for COVID patients, and witnessed even more tragedies there.
When I chose to leave, it was because of several factors. I felt burned out and disillusioned, and I was concerned about safety. Many of my colleagues had left to pursue travel nursing, so I had few resources on the unit. I was also working nearly every weekend, missing time with family and friends. At the same time, I felt curious about other pursuits — like writing — and wanted to take the time to invest in those things more fully.”
Rachel Schmidt
"I first left beside nursing when my military spouse was stationed overseas. That break illustrated the toll that the job was taking on me personally. I've since found that nontraditional nursing positions allow me more work-life balance and flexibility in meeting both my personal needs and those of my family."
Ann Real
“I worked mainly in psychiatric facilities, which is a very different environment from traditional bedside nursing. One day, after a shift at a facility with serious safety issues, I ended up in the emergency room. Lying there, I realized, I’m not going to be able to keep doing this for much longer.
I decided to step away from patient care for a while and give myself time to recover from what I had experienced. Then, life happened, and I eventually found a different career path. That experience taught me something important: A nursing career can take many different forms. There isn’t just one path, one setting, or one way to build a meaningful career in nursing.”
How to Consider Leaving Bedside Nursing
If you’re in a job that you know isn’t right for you, it can be hard to know what to do next. Familiar discomfort in your current role can feel easier to endure than taking a risk on something new. As a nurse, you have many options when it comes to specialty, setting, schedule, and patient population, but it doesn’t always feel that way when you’ve been working in one area for some time.
On the other hand, an entire career change might not be necessary. Maybe you just need a different schedule, like switching from night shift to day shift. If you’re struggling with a lack of confidence at work, pursuing a certification might help solidify your expertise. There are a thousand ways to tweak or completely change your nursing career. Let’s explore the basic steps of evaluating your current role and choosing what’s next.
Step 1: Identify Factors Pushing You Out
What are the specific reasons you’re considering a change? While you might identify with items on the list above, your situation will be specific to you. Maybe you notice high levels of pre-shift anxiety before work, or short staffing has left you working more weekends than you anticipated.
Write down what’s pushing you out of the position you’re in now. What’s the greatest source of stress or discomfort? Is it temporary or permanent? What are the effects on your life inside and outside of work?
It may also be helpful to categorize issues (with the understanding that these categories likely overlap). Here are some examples:
- Safety: “I can’t manage the amount of high-acuity patients I am assigned per shift, and I’m scared I’ll make a mistake.”
- Emotional: “I feel so stressed on the drive to work that sometimes I consider turning around.”
- Social: “Most of my unit is travel nurses who I don’t know well, so I have trouble finding help when I need it.”
- Logistical: “My kids are home during the day, so I get home from a night shift and can only sleep a few hours before I have to go in again.”
Step 2: Identify Factors Pulling You Back or Forward
As you consider leaving bedside nursing, think about the things you enjoy about your job. Maybe you have great relationships with coworkers, or you find specific tasks, like patient education, particularly gratifying. These positive factors may be strong enough to keep you in a role, even if negative factors are present as well. On the other hand, they may not be.
Other pull factors may be urging you into something else. Maybe you’re curious about another specialty, or you think you’d do well as a nurse leader or educator. You might be interested in working with a different patient population, having a different schedule, or pursuing higher education. Or you might not want to continue working in healthcare at all.
There are many reasons people remain in bedside roles. Check out some of the reasons nurses choose patient-facing careers:
- Enjoying helping others
- Constant learning
- Interdisciplinary collaboration
- Patient education
- Expertise in a specialty
Step 3: Consider Your Options
Now that you have your push and pull factors, think about ways you can work to decrease what is unpleasant while nurturing the things that excite you. The solution you come up with may involve leaving bedside nursing, but it might be worth exploring less drastic solutions first.
Check out the following simplified examples of push and pull factors, as well as potential solutions, to get an idea of how you might think through these questions for yourself:
- Matthew, a med-surg nurse, feels pushed out by a harmful workplace culture on his unit. He’s interested in working with fewer patients in a new environment. He decides to transfer to the surgical-trauma intensive care unit (STICU).
- Sharon is burned out from working for several years in labor and delivery, but she loves working with families. She decides to take a break from full-time work and go back to school to become a certified nurse midwife (CNM).
- Monica is on her fourth nursing job in the last six years and is tired of working with patients. She wants to work from home on regular office hours, so she pursues a role in utilization review.
- Andreas has just finished a new graduate residency, but often feels anxious that he doesn’t know enough. He chooses to pursue a nursing certification to validate his knowledge and gain confidence.
- Paulina is an experienced long-term care nurse who’s ready to leave behind the physical demands of her job. She enjoys leading teams as charge nurse, and wants to learn more about administration, so she applies for a role as unit manager.
Step 4: Choose a Path and Plan for it to Shift
You might come to the end of the consideration process and realize there are a few other things you’d like to try before leaving the bedside. On the other hand, this ideation might have solidified your desire to leave. If you feel like your passion for patient care has run out, or you’ve exhausted all your options, leaving bedside nursing may be a relief.
Nurses are often fearful of losing the hard-won clinical skills that come with bedside care. But remember that any role requires skills, and you won’t be leaving your strengths behind. They’ll be with you wherever you go next, and you’ll likely gain new ones as well.
Another common fear around leaving bedside nursing is not being a “real nurse” anymore. This is a perception worth challenging. Nurses are multifaceted people with multiple strengths, many working in a variety of industries outside of healthcare. It’s not wrong to use your skills and knowledge in another area, and doing so won’t make you less of a professional.
If you’re interested in a new career away from patient care, check out the resources below:
- 14 great non-bedside nursing jobs
- 10 jobs that let you work from home as a nurse
- The most common career changes for nurses
Whatever solution you choose to pursue, remember that it’s not permanent — no job is. Ideally, you’ll find one that fits your strengths, whether it’s at the bedside or elsewhere.
Find Your Next Role with Credenza
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