I’m a German nurse applying for a job office as a clinical coder. The main reason to leave bedside? I’m tired of dealing with arrogant, non compliant patients and being blamed for things I cannot control: think about the diabetic patient that keeps drinking coca cola or a patient that outright lies to me claiming he took his medication, but he doesn’t or being blamed because a patient didn’t go to angiology on time because I had to assist with another procedure. There are much more examples but I’ll stop now.

I just want a quiet job with regular working hours and to have a life, time and energy for my hobbies. Being a clinical coder could be it. A simple, repetitive, boring office job looks like a blessing as of now.

I don’t believe you should find accomplishment in a job: I work because I need the money and I have no idea what to write to imply I’m passionate about assigning numbers to medical cases so my hospital gets paid. It’s like being an accountant. What do accountants write in their apps to impress potential employers? I like large and properly filed databases?

It doesn’t look good if I write that I’m tired of working bedside (for the reasons I mentioned) and I just want to find a quiet job and go home and leave work at work, does it? But writing that I’m a nerd for figures and love assigning numbers to cases and also love large and properly formatted data files sounds ridiculous.

At the same time, I still don’t want to shut the door completely to bedside because it still pays more than this position as a clinical coder and I may decide to go back later in time.

ETA: In Germany we also work with NANDA Diagnosis and Diagnosis-related Groups, like our American counterparts.