Nurse educator-different pathway
Hey all, just hoping to get some advice for my specific situation. I'm an RN that's 3 years out. I dream of becoming a nurse educator someday (knowing this will take time to get there) because I genuinely love teaching students and helping break things down in a manageable way. I was working in a public hospital in my grad year, 2 months post I got injured, pretty badly. I jumped between multiple different areas in the WorkCover journey gaining some fun experience in the day infusion centre, infection control, and floating across wards as a helper. After a year I had to leave because my injury was too debilitating to be doing the manual handling work of a hospital. I found a radiology nursing job, my back is so much better and have been doing that for almost a year. It's a great, relatively relaxed gig but it's definitely not my passion and I feel my growth becoming impacted. I won't be able to return to ward nursing because my back still has issues that manual handling would ruin. I want to find a good balance of clinical and education in an intellectually stimulating environment that won't impact my physical health. I was thinking of doing a Cert IV in training and assessment for starters. It's also hard to know what to do for a post grad as I don't have the specialised ward experience in a single area to become a CNS. It's hard to know that I can never become a clinical nurse educator through the typical pathway of being on a ward for 5-8 years and then becoming an educator due to my injury but I want to try hard to find my own pathway. Just wondering if anyone has any advice or stories to share about different pathways they have experienced so I can find some inspiration in knowing what to do next.
TLDR: How to become a clinical leaning nurse educator if got injured in early career