Where are all the young nurses? - Page 5

Oh that ROBOT Nurse really cracked me up!!! Still... food for thought isn't it? Made me think of my voice navigation system. I could just hear the Robot response to complaints from patients... would be my voice navigation system speaking.. "I'm sorry I did not understand your last command. Please press the talk button and speak a command, for a list of commands please say HELP"... hmm... sounds like a pretty good way to deal with the Chronic complainers.....

I tend to be one of the "older" nurses at the age of 39.
My unit tends to attract the young, bright and ambitious. We lost 5 young nurses to CRNA school this year. I will miss them.

I am here. All you need to do is hired me!!!

you certainly made my day, i can almost hear the robot saying, "sir, if you are in pain press #1 if not # 2, otherwise wait for the operator, this message will be recorded for instructional purposes, your complaint will be handle in the order that it was received thank you for your patience"

The hospitals have to start investing in nurses right out of school. We old nurses can't run up and down the halls as fast as we did. How fast do you think this 64 year old can go? What's more the old and new nurses can learn from each other - improving the care that each patient deserves. If I knew 41 years ago that nursing would come down to this, I would have gone for my masters then PHD and go teach History in some college somewhere.

I know I am categorizing, but so many non-tradional new grads have tested my patience to the limit when i have had to precept them. I know of RN's who refuse to accept an older new grad as their preceptor (or an LPN to RN), due to the fact that that are so unwilling to be told what to do.

I'm glad my preceptor and I had a great experience. We've stayed friends, and she happily writes recommendation letters for me. She even came to graduation and gave me a beautiful angel necklace.

speaking as a new grad myself (graduated in august 2011, started work in october 2011), i can definitely vouch that school does not give us any heads up as to what "real world" nursing is really like. i graduated from a bsn program so it felt like half the time we were writing papers during school. and then in our last semester we spent nine shifts in our "immersion" where we were to take on a full patient load and do everything on our own, even calling docs where appropriate. but even that was nothing compared to what "real world" nursing is. it was a bit of an abrupt/rude awakening for me, that is for sure. call me naive, but i honestly did not realize how positively stressful nursing is (or at least on the med/surg unit that i am on!). and maybe it's just one of those things that i need to get used to as a new grad, like getting a good routine down and just getting used to environment, but i can definitely see why some new grads choose to leave the profession quickly. i already know that as much as i love the job, i don't see myself doing hospital bedside nursing in 10 years. i just don't want to live with all that constant stress.

then again, this could just be something that i still need adjust to and i could wind up doing bedside nursing for 30+ years.

tl;dr it's just that for now, still in my <1 year experience bracket, i spend most of my days still cursing my alma mater because i feel like it did next to nothing to prepare me for what "real world" nursing is really like. and that is beyond frustrating for a type-a person like myself because i expected better. from my school and from myself. i wanted to be more prepared than what i feel like i am right now. i know that i can do the job, and i know that one day i will be able to do the job very well, but that's just not today. not yet. and, for me, that's what makes it difficult, frustrating and just downright hard to keep going in to work just to be reminded how little i know and how little prepared i feel.

i still go in--everyday--and i don't plan on quitting any time soon (although there are those days!!); it's just the picture of nursing that school painted was very, very different than what it really is. that could be part of the problem.

The nursing schools have failed us. In my BSN program, we begged the school to extend our clinical hours during our final role transition. Instead, they cut the hours in half and created a SECOND research course. Why?! As a new graduate bedside nurse, my first priority should be safe, thorough bedside nursing practice. I feel like the PhD's who are running nursing programs completely devalue the tremendous expertise required for excellent (or even competent) bedside nursing care. I have all of this knowledge in my head, and I am desperate to move it into my hands, but I can't do that alone. I need to be in a hospital with a veteran nurse. In this economy, why would a hospital want to invest so much money in training a new graduate? I don't blame the for-profit health care system, or the nonprofit health care institutions trying to stay afloat. I blame the nursing schools for preparing me to pass the NCLEX and write research papers, but not preparing me to actually be a practicing, flesh and blood Registered Nurse.

Where are all the young nurses? We are beating down their doors trying to find jobs, but hospitals don't want us. And honestly, I don't blame them.

In my program there are 3 of us who ate under 21. I'm the youngest in my program. I started at 18 and am now 19. I will graduate when I'm 20. By the that time the other 2 will be 21 hoing on 22. We are on the way. We are in an ADN program and most of our graduates the past 12 years have been offered a job before graduation has even taken place. I live in rural southeast NC. ADN and BSN new grads don't have too many problems getting jobs around here.