Nurses have an incredible and valuable skillset, and better yet, these skills can be surprisingly transferable. With irregular and often anti-social shift patterns, finding the right side hustle to make extra money as a nurse is a bit of a challenge. Still, there are plenty of options out there, both utilising your medical expertise and external to that field.
Using Your Medical Skills
These side hustles take full advantage of your medical expertise and allow you to earn money outside of your regular work. As they use your specialised skill, these are often better paid than the alternatives.
Proofreading Medical Content - $25-60 per hour
You have medical knowledge most people don't have. By proofreading content of journals, pharmaceutical businesses, and other publications, you can help to ensure the content’s accuracy.
Proofreading can be a well-paying role, too, given the unique skills you need to have. It can be helpful to have a qualification like the CIEP, and from there you just need to build out your portfolio and target clients in need of medical proofreading.
I’d suggest using sites like Upwork, Cactus Communications, and Reedsy to build up your portfolio, after which you should be able to directly target higher-paying clients in pharma or health technology.
Being a First Aid Instructor - $100-250 per class
Teaching people first aid can be a hugely rewarding experience. The knowledge you impart could save lives more than you even realise, and you already know the necessary information! All you need to do is learn how to teach it.
Find the right first aid instruction certification for your country - from the US to Germany, different countries will have different requirements, and you’ll often have to pay for the course. After this, though, you can work part time either for professional organisations like St John’s Ambulance or freelance with local companies, charities, and educational institutions
Telehealth Nursing - $25-45 per hour
Services like the UK’s NHS 111, as well as private services like Babylon Health always need qualified, knowledgeable people to answer questions and offer advice to potential patients.
Your nursing qualification will be a huge help in getting selected for this kind of role, but even as a remote triage nurse, you may still be required to work unsociable hours.
Writing for Medical Blogs - $50-250 per article
This can be a bit more of a creative role for nurses looking to find a side hustle! Pay can vary drastically, and you’ll probably have to prove your writing ability by putting together a portfolio for little to no pay.
If this doesn’t put you off and you’re intrigued by the more creative side of this side hustle, then it’s a scalable, remote role that you can do at any time of day. Start by writing a blog that takes your medical knowledge and communicates it in a relatable way to the public, and with these writing samples supporting you, you can contact publication editors with your own unique stories!
Creating Study Guides for Prospective Nurses - $10-50 per download
You already studied for a nursing degree. How’d you do? If you’ve always been an organised, academic person, the work for this side hustle might already be done! Nursing can be a gruelling degree to train for, so if you’re the proud creator of some nice-looking planners or study guides to help you prepare for your exams, you might as well profit from it.
Sites like Etsy and Gumroad allow you to upload study guides and planners and receive payments in exchange for download access, and it’s probably the closest you can get to actual passive income as a side hustle. Just make sure you’re up to date on the latest nursing syllabus, or you’ll have people studying the wrong things!
Tutoring Nursing Students - $20-50 per hour
If you’re more of an in-person teacher, becoming a tutor can be a rewarding way to earn money and help the next generation of nurses. Of course, you’ll have to ensure your understanding of the exam structure and syllabus is sound, but if you’re confident on the academic side of things, this is the perfect nursing side hustle.
It’s more dynamic than a lot of the alternatives - every student has different needs and weaknesses, so it can be a fun side hustle with a lot of variety and unique problems to solve. Tutorful, and other tutoring websites, can be useful for this kind of work, especially if you’re looking to focus on online tutoring. Using local and nursing student-oriented Facebook groups can get you much more reliable contacts, though!
Ad-Hoc Clinic Nurse - $20-30 per hour
You know how to be a nurse, it’s already your job. The familiar environment means it’s both a relatively simple side hustle to get to grips with, whilst potentially not offering enough variety from your day-to-day grind.
If you’re someone who wants to keep it simple though, occasional shifts as an ad-hoc nurse can be a strong side hustle to boost your income a bit. Check listings with local doctors and clinics to see if anyone is hiring - you’re already qualified!
