Where do you work and do you like it.

Nurses New Nurse

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The "holy grail" at least in my nursing school is to get a hospital job FAST. So for those that did not get hired at a hospital after nursing school, where did you get your first nursing job. Is in in LTAC/ LTC, SNF, Home Health, Hospice, Private Duty, Clinics..... you name it.

Where did you get your first nursing job?

How did you get the job?

Are you still working there??

Do you like it ?

Do you hate it ?

Or just surviving and why.

First job? Three part time jobs concurrently- school RN, ASC RN, consultant at a psych assisted living

How obtained? Craigslist of course!

Still there? Nope. After about a year I landed an awesome ft gig at outpatient endoscopy that is much closer to home. LOVE IT! I am always home well before 5pm and never work an evening, weekend or holiday! I know hospital is the "holy grail" for many, but, trust me, outpatient rocks! Try it and you'll see!!

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Specializes in Pedi.

Where did you get your first nursing job? Pediatric Hospital.

How did you get the job? Did two clinicals including preceptorship on the floor. Was hired before I graduated.

Are you still working there?? Thankfully no.

Do you like it? I did at the beginning.

Do you hate it? By the end, yes. Hence why there was an end.

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Specializes in Clinical Documentation Specialist, LTC.

First job was at a LTC where I got a half day of orientation. Went through a lot of jobs until I finally landed where I believe I will stay. I work with a major home health company as a LPN Intake Specialist and love it so far.

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Twinmom: How did you get your first RN job in the float pool.!!! OMG was it terrifying???

LTCN: Yikes !! only half a day of training.

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Specializes in Med-Surg and Ambulatory Care (multispecialty).

Where did you get your first nursing job? A local nursing home I had previously worked at before & during nursing school

How did you get the job? Waited for an opening, specifically on the unit I had already worked on before (acute care/hospice unit)

Are you still working there?? Yes, for a month and a half now

Do you like it ? LOVE it !!!:)

Do you hate it ? Not yet...and I hope I never do

Or just surviving and why. I feel for new nurses who are just working somewhere to get there experience and move on to something they might like better. It's rough to get your foot in the door to get that golden year of experience straight out of school but it can be done. Unfortunately for some the road to a nursing job they love to go to every day is more bumpy than it is for others. STAY STRONG!! You WILL get there!

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Specializes in Primary Care.

Where did you get your first nursing job: Medical-Oncology unit in a hospital

How did you get the job: Applied online

Are you still working there: Yes, for about 8 months now

Like / Hate / Surviving: I like most of the people I work with, but this is a stepping-stone position to gain experience for graduate school. I knew bedside nursing wouldn't be for me, but I didn't realize how much it wasn't for me until I started working. Every day is a race against time, and I feel like a med-pushing maid most of the time. Good deeds, accomplishments and positive acknowledgements by patients are ignored by management, but get one small complaint about attitude and you're "sitting in the principal's office." I'm happy when it's a good day, but it makes the bad days feel twice as bad. I'm very much looking forward to grad school and move forward with my career.

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Specializes in LTC Rehab Med/Surg.

First job: LTC. Loved it. Quit for a family emergency.

Acquired the job: Resume through the mail. Snail mail.

I've had about 7-8 Nursing Jobs since that first one in LTC.

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Specializes in Forensic Psychiatry.

I was not able to land that Acute care hospital job after nursing school graduation. The market in my area has some heavy new graduate saturation and my mobility was limited.

Where did you get your first nursing job: Forensic Stabilization Float Pool at a State Hospital

How did you get the job: government jobsite or my state job boards - I don't remember which one now. I earned my B.A in psych shortly before earning my BSN and I got an award for an undergraduate research project I conducted at a recovery facility for individuals on parole, probation and in custody. I also had a good amount of volunteer community service and volunteer hands on patient care hours. Unlike the acute care hospitals in the area - the government counted this as experience and did look at GPA, Honors, Awards ect. whereas the acute care hospitals did not- they just wanted experience.

Are you still working there: I still work at the facility but I took a full time position (my float pool position was as a temp) as a swing shift nurse on one of the units in the forensic stabilization building.

Like/Hate/Surviving: I have a love hate relationship with my job. The work is intensely interesting - my clients are criminally insane "guilty by reason of insanity", and their crimes can be heinous. However, from a nursing standpoint- I really don't do too many skills. I'll do some physical assessments when my clients have physical complaints, a lot of behavioral assessments, IM injections, PO medication administration, some treatments, a LOT of charting and a lot of S/R orders. Sometimes I wish that I could use more nursing skills - but other times, I really don't miss the suctioning trach's or placing catheters of nursing school clincals. The trade off however is that currently I'm working what could only be described as the behavioral ICU - these patients get transferred to my unit- or admitted to my unit - because they are too violent to be on any other unit at the hospital. Assaults against staff and other patients are frequent. Most of the clients on this floor will never discharge back into the community and their progress is measured in days. Many also don't want to be here and some downright hate the staff (there are some clients who have promised to hunt us down in the community and kill us/our entire families in the event they ever get out of the hospital). So that can be really hard and I can feel like I'm putting in a lot of work and energy into people that are never going to progress forward. My dream was to go to acute care/hospital - but I have a lot of autonomy at my work and I don't know if I could go comfortably from this atmosphere of collaboration (my doctors often ask the nursing staff "What do you think we should do?") to an environment where I just carry out orders (many of the nurses came here from acute care and left that environment because of unsupportive staff, lateral violence and MD's that wouldn't collaborate with the nurses).

I do want to go for an advanced degree - FNP or PMHNP- and would really like to either stay at a state hospital or go into corrections. I feel comfortable in this setting.

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Specializes in Oncology, Ortho/trauma,.

First Job : Out patient chemotherapy infusion Nurse and Procedure Team

I got the job by applying for a scholarship and interviewing during the last year of my college. It was a contract. They paid for the last year and you worked for them for two years.

I wish I was still working there. I moved out of the country after my two years was up. All for the love of adventure. I got paid there 15,000 more a year than I make now working 3 JOBS!

I loved outpatient- Hospital nursing is not the end all be all they make it out to be in school.

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Specializes in Psych ICU, addictions.

Granted, it's been a few years since I was a new grad...

1. Psych hospital

2. Classmate worked there and encouraged me to check it out--I always joke that I got the job only because in the interview, I knew what Cogentin was.

3. No longer there d/t my relocating out of state, I liked what I did (and still do) but the facility could have been a lot better.

Now I'm in a awesome hospital and have no plans to go anywhere anytime soon :)

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Where did you get your first nursing job? US Army--Walter Reed Army Medical Center

How did you get the job? I signed on the dotted line and raised my right hand.

Are you still working there? Nope.

Do you like it ? Sure did. Never found a place quite like WRAMC.

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Specializes in Operating Room.

Where did you get your first nursing job? My first job was in the Pediatric ICU at a large teaching hospital. I was fired from there after 3 months and now I work on an Orthopedics unit within the same hospital.

How did you get the job? I was working in the hospital's Outpatient Pharmacy as a tech while I finished school, so I had an "in".

Are you still working there? Still on the Orthopedics unit, yes.

Do you like it? I LOVE Ortho. In retrospect, I despised my first job. Not the patients, but everything else.

Do you hate it? I hate it when I get difficult patients (like some traumas or acute withdrawals) but overall no.

Or just surviving and why. Sometimes I feel like I'm just surviving! Overall though I do love my job, my patients, and my hospital.

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