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Nursing is a labor of love. Love for the patients we care for, love for the profession and skills, love for the ability to truly help people when they are in desperate need. But what do you do when your own health declines and prevents you from being the best nurse you can be?\\xa0 What if bedside nursing is no longer an option? When the very career you are so passionate about seems to be closed to you, do you give up? Or do you find another way to still be a nurse? Our guest this week is Ashley Hay of Ahaynursing, did the latter and found her way onto a new and little known path of nursing, that of nurse writing.
Take a listen as Ashley shares her journey into nursing and how she overcame challenging roadblocks to pivot into nurse entrepreneurship as a writer. If you are like me and had no clue this was even an avenue for nurses, you're in for a treat with this episode!

Show Notes:

• Desired from an early age to become a pediatric nurse in oncology.
• Ashely admits that her nursing path was "not a straight line".
• She started off trying out her state college in New Jersey and hated that experience. She was there one semester and dropped out.
• Instead did her own research and found a small local nursing school and found that a much better fit, and really hit her stride.
• While she absolutely loved her roles as a bedside/floor nurse, her health eventually prevented her from continuing in that work.
• \\xa0First job was in adult oncology at a big hospital in New York.
• oncology is an area of nursing that often leads to burn out. Ashley was able to beat this by changing jobs within oncology. changing from adults to peds for example.
• Ashley had the difficult realization that her health was making it so she was not the nurse she would have wanted at her bedside.\\xa0
• Her husband helped encourage her to find a different avenue in nursing that would not have such a negative impact on her own health.\\xa0
• Stumbled upon nurse writing, found a few fantastic mentors to help her get started.
• Ashley shares tips on how to get into the medical/nurse writing path.
• 5 years ago started her own freelance writing and clinical consulting business.
• Her advice: "Just be patient" it takes time for your business to get going, but there are others there to help you out.

Links:

1. https://allnurses.com/ Ashley suggests starting here if you are interested in becoming a nurse writer.\\xa0
2. https://www.linkedin.com/in/ahaynursing/ To find Ashley Hay on Linkedin, click here.
3. https://ahaynursing.com/ To learn more about Ashley and her writing business, check out her website here.
4. https://ahaynursing.contently.com/ Ashley was willing to share her writing portfolio to help you get ideas on what you can write about as a medical/nurse writer.
5. https://stillanurse.co/ check out our new and evolving website here.