Side Hustles for Nurses to Earn Extra Cash

Personal Finance / Side Hustles for Nurses

Picking up a side hustle is a great idea for nurses. Sometimes nurses don’t want to put all their cotton swabs in one jar. In other words, nurses don’t want to limit themselves to one nursing job. Say a nurse works in the ER department but only works three days a week. They may want to pursue another job on the side to help supplement their income or increase their knowledge in another area. 

Accordingly, more and more nurses have begun pursuing nursing side hustles.

Side hustles come in many different types of forms. 

Below you will find several nursing side hustles that are specific to nurses. 

1. Medical Transcription Medical Transcription is where someone types out a transcript of an audio recording from medical personnel.
2. Medical Coding The job of a medical coder is to classify medical diagnoses with their respective billing codes for billing medical insurance. Medical Coding Book: https://amzn.to/3optuqQ
3. Telehealth Nurse A telehealth nurse mainly works over the phone (or video service) and they evaluate patient symptoms and provide proper medical advice on treating those symptoms.
4. Nurse Health Coach A Health Coach is someone who helps his or her client to change the current lifestyle and replace it with a new one through guidance and management. This usually includes the aspect of nutrition and daily eating habits as well as exercises.
5. Immunization Nurse The immunization nurse is a Registered Nurse or Licensed Practical Nurse (LPN) who gives out immunization shots in a seasonal flu clinic, hospital. Like the flu shots, vaccine shots, and other required immunizations for work, school, and health issues.
6. First Aid Class Instructor If you’re looking for a side hustle close to your profession, teaching first aid classes is your best bet. You can teach interested parties how to perform CPR, how to treat different kinds of wounds, and what to do when someone needs serious medical treatment.
7. Nursing Tutor A nursing tutor works to help new nursing students with their class assignments and answer any questions they may have.

1. Freelance Nurse Writer

Becoming a freelance nurse writer is a great hustle for nurses who are creative and understand the field. Many organizations are desperate to find nurse writers to provide insight for their websites.

Nurse writers can expect to find work within the following mediums:

Website content: This type of writing provides an opportunity to work on a company’s website, including helping with a website’s SEO or writing niche articles.

Web-based magazines: Writers will have a chance to publish articles relating to the nursing field.
Email marketing: Involves sending sales messages to groups of people using email.

Blogging: As a blogger, you would write content about the company you represent as part of their content strategy.

Social media writer: Every company needs a social media component and several medical-based companies seek writers to help them out.

What you need to start

There’s one word you need to remember when considering starting as a freelance nurse writer: specialize.

Specialization doesn’t require 10,000 hours.

Start broad and narrow your scope over time. Or take two interests you have and combine them to form a specialty. For instance, if you enjoy science and medicine, maybe you can write about biotech or pharmaceuticals.

If you want to dive into and learn more about your specialty, look into professional associations. For example, the National Association of Science Writers offers writers a journal, events, regional groups, job banks and freelance opportunities.

After that, it’s all about networking. You can create a free portfolio on Clippings.me and then join a site that helps you find clients, such as Upwork.

As you gain more clients and your reputation grows, you can charge more.

That said, freelance writing can be a lucrative gig for nurses.

2. Telehealth Nurse

This is a more emerging role for nurses to pursue and is especially relevant during the pandemic. Telehealth nurses provide high-quality healthcare to patients through video, phone, or email.

According to the American Hospital Association, 76 percent of U.S. hospitals connect with patients through the use of video and other technology.

For nurses who enjoy working from home and want a flexible schedule, this might be a perfect fit.

What you need to start

This role requires three to five years of bedside or RN experience, a background check and an unrestricted RN license.

Also, you must have a strong Internet connection and excellent computer skills.

3. Part-Time Caregiving

As a part-time caregiver, you are usually responsible for meeting a variety of needs for a patient.

This may include bathing the patient, cooking and serving food, helping with exercise routines, performing household chores like laundry, and more.

Part-time caregivers tend to make around $13.00 an hour, giving nurses the perfect opportunity to use their nursing skills to earn extra money. If you work only 20 hours a week as a part-time caregiver, this puts an extra $1,126 in your bank account each month.

4. Become CPR Instructor

When you put a CPR teaching certificate to good use, you can earn almost twice as much as part-time caregivers. To get certified to teach CPR, click here. You can work with an employer or employment agency to find facilities in need of your CPR training services.

Or, if you prefer, you can start your own small CPR training brand and set your own rates and take on your own marketing and networking. You can grow your nurse side hustle as much as you want.

5. Healthcare Documentation Specialist

This role requires translating voice recordings from doctors and other medical professionals into a written document. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, you can use speech recognition technology to help transcribe.

The great news is that there’s a lot of positions available for this kind of work.

Sites such as Fiverr and GoTranscript are great platforms to find work on in this specific field.
These sites are free. The only requirement is good grammar and strong internet to start working.

If you want to continue learning and boost your resume, an associate degree or certificate in anatomy or medical terminology can help your cause.

Final Thoughts on Nursing Side Hustles 

Nurses have a great opportunity to make extra money and increase their knowledge with side hustles. However, some nurses still need help finding their main hustle. If that’s your situation, sign up with Incredible Health and find a job that’s right for you.