Nursing Experience An Excellent Springboard To Second Career

CHICAGO - Linda Bilandzic designs T-shirts for a living - and a very nice living it is, she says.

Karen Conter runs a $8.5 million business with more than 800 employees.

Mark Cappello is a free-lancer who administers anesthesia, one day in a hospital in Glendale, the next perhaps in a doctor's office in Kankakee.

Three people, three different businesses, but a unifying credential: All are nurses.

There's nothing unusual about people starting second careers. For years, pharmaceutical and consulting companies have snapped up nurses to be knowledgeable salespeople or members of technical business groups.

But more and more, nurses figure the best bet for a second career might not be working for yet another boss, but to run the entire show. For some it's a way to make more money or get more control over scheduling. For all, it's a way to fulfill the dream of being one's own boss.

"The advantage of being an entrepreneur is that you can work any 12 hours you want," said Nancy Doleysh, an author and president of Advanced Healthcare Concepts, a consulting company she founded in Richfield, Wis.

Doleysh is typical of many nurse-entrepreneurs in that her second career is an extension of her first in many ways. She describes Advanced Healthcare Concepts as "providing expertise on demand."

For example, a hospital that decided to hire its first neurosurgeon needed a crash-course for employees on how to handle the new patients expected, what kind of standards and policies would be required by such a specialty, and other issues stemming from adding a specialty.

Doleysh, whose nursing specialty is neuro-ortho trauma, helped the hospital figure out how to deal with the new practice.

About 30 nurses, all with specialties, work with Doleysh from time to time. These nurses are self-employed, although Doleysh said many have at least part-time hospital jobs to keep their expertise sharp.

When Karen Conter decided to start her company, Chicago-based Pro-Nurse, she and partner Bonnie Zawara took a different tack. They hired the people they wanted to be part of the company.

Pro-Nurse is a temporary nursing agency with its roots in Conter's own nursing days.

"Most of the agencies are run by businessmen, and it seemed to me and Bonnie that this was something that could be run better by nurses," Conter said.

Pro-Nurse started in November 1987 in Conter's loft apartment. There were two nurses on the payroll. Today Pro-Nurse has about 650 nurses in Chicago, she said. In addition, the company opened a Los Angeles office in 1989, which has between 150 and 200 nurses, and a Miami Beach branch in 1990 with about 50 nurses.

A newer division of Pro-Nurse, called Contract Staffing, fills longer-term nursing vacancies.

All the nurses are employees of Pro-Nurse. But many choose not to work full time or to accept only certain shifts. For those nurses, Pro-Nurse offers flexibility. For Conter, it offers a huge job.

"I do no bedside care anymore," she said. "This has all my rising hours accounted for."

Ruth Matson also has put bedside care behind her, and she's delighted. Hindsight tells her she probably shouldn't have become a nurse to begin with.

"But when you're 17 or 18, what do you know?" she said laughing.

After 20 years as a hands-on nurse, Matson quit to start a chain of day-care centers for slightly ill children that has gained national attention. Her first such center, Chicken Soup in Minneapolis, no longer exists, but Matson is president of Sick Kid Kare Inc., which runs four such facilities in that region.

Some nurses want self-employment, control and to stick with the job. For them, becoming an independent contractor may be an option. Some nursing specialists, such as nurse-anesthetists, report annual income of $100,000 or more by taking the independent route.

Cappello said demand for nurse-anesthetists has increased as more doctors perform surgery in clinics, offices and other non-traditional settings.

Another reason is money: Being a free-lancer "is very lucrative," the Chicago-based nurse-anesthetist said. "A nurse-anesthetist in Chicago typically makes around $30 an hour, but the hospital is probably billing around $400 for that case. After a while you say, `I'm only getting one-tenth of the revenue.' That's why people go into it."

For some people, however, a second career is just that - a new start.

Linda Bilandzic of Arlington Heights, Ill., founded Getting This World Into Shape, which designs and markets T-shirts and sweatshirts. The only link this venture has with nursing is that many of the designs are nursing-oriented - one has the slogan "nurses give lots of love" - and the items frequently are sold in hospital gift shops.

"I worked in surgery, and I just got burned out," she said. "This was just a dream of mine, to start a business."

She estimates about 10,000 shirts carrying her designs are sold annually. While she won't reveal her income, she said it's been "great, good."

So is the moral of the story that nurses should dash out and start a company, make lots of money and live happily ever after?

As the song says: It ain't necessarily so.

All of the women said nursing school did nothing to prepare them for the rigors of business life. Matson said she went back to school to take classes in management and child development. Conter said she and her partner had to hire expertise to make sure they handled the new business correctly.

Underlying the transition from nursing to business is the issue of respect.

"I think nurses are really put into a box," Matson said bluntly. "They're thought of as medical people, as `gals' who help the doctor."