Faculty Recommendations

Nursing Students General Students

Published

Specializes in Neuro.

I am getting close (sort of) to graduation and I am planning to apply to an internship at a local hospital for new grads. As part of the application I need to include 2 faculty recommendations. While I feel I have a good rapport with all of my instructors in the classroom and in clinical, I am curious what kind of recommendations would be the most impressive. I am planning (at this point) to apply for a critical care/ER track.

Should I focus on getting recommendations from clinical faculty because they have seen me practice with real patients? Or would it be appropriate to get a recommendation from a lecture professor who heads up the trauma program at the hospital I am applying to? Or do the credentials or specialties of the faculty not make a difference when it comes to recommendation letters?

Thanks for any info!

Up Vote Up Vote ×

I am a faculty member, and, in my area, most of the hospitals specify to the new grads who are job-hunting that they want references from clinical instructors.

Up Vote Up Vote ×
Specializes in med/surg, telemetry, IV therapy, mgmt.

In the city where I was a manager that hired new grads, I found that the nursing programs kept a file on each nursing student. They had each of their instructors fill out an evaluation on each of their students at the end of each semester or quarter. This was done so that if the instructor left employment with the school, the nursing program still had specific and sufficient instructor evaluations on each of their students to provide to any employers who wanted the evaluations. Our nurse recruiter would pick up the phone and speak directly to the instructors at the various programs and ask them who their best students were. She already had a laundry list of the names of potential new grads she was interested in talking to before students even started applying for jobs with us. I was never particularly picky about whether I was reading an evaluation from a clinical or classroom instructor. I was trained to be more attentive to attitude and behavior. It's easy to weed out and get rid of someone who is not a safe practitioner or who is stupid about the way they practice nursing. Getting rid of someone with a bad or negative attitude, with poor attendance, who causes trouble among the other workers or has a smart mouth is much harder to do. I'm more interested in nailing down those problems and most evaluators won't put that kind of stuff in writing without appropriate documentation to back it up. These behaviors sometimes take longer periods of time than just one semester or quarter of a nursing program to be noticed, particularly when a student never has the same instructor twice during their nursing program.

I would recommend that you use an instructor for a recommendation who you got along with well and who you feel is going to give you a fair and honest recommendation. You should also talk to the instructor and tell him/her that you are applying for internships, would it be OK for you to use them as a reference, and thank them for taking the time to do this for you. That is just the professional way to approach this.

Up Vote Up Vote ×

But I graduated in 1996...do you think they'll remember me? It hard to get a professor rec. if you've been out of school so long. What should I do?

Up Vote Up Vote ×
Specializes in ICU.

Unless you've stayed in contact with your profs from 1996, I doubt they'd remember you. This would not lead to any sort of meaningful recommendation.

Up Vote Up Vote ×
Specializes in med/surg, telemetry, IV therapy, mgmt.
But I graduated in 1996...do you think they'll remember me? It hard to get a professor rec. if you've been out of school so long. What should I do?

What kind of job do you need a nursing faculty reference for? I see from your profile that you list yourself as an RN/BSN. Are you saying that since you graduated from nursing school in 1996 you have never worked as an RN? The recommendation of an instructor is primarily needed to get you your first job as you are coming out of nursing school. That is because for the time that you are in nursing school your instructors are the only RNs who can judge what your performance is going to be as an RN. However, once you get your first RN job, you no longer NEED an instructor's recommendation because you will have nursing coworkers, supervisors and managers from which to get work recommendations. To not use those people from your first RN job for references when you look for your second nursing job will look suspicious if it is a good length of time since you got out of school. People who are hiring you want to get recommendations from people who know about your current work in the past 1 to 3 years.

Going on the assumption that you graduated from RN school in 1996 and have never worked as an RN because you have supplied no other information. . .Most nursing schools keep a file on every student that includes written evaluations that were made by their instructors. Even if the instructors are no longer employed there or don't remember a specific student, there should be enough information in every student file to be able to put together a recommendation. But I see a few problems for someone who finished nursing school 11 years ago and may or may not have actively worked as a nurse. (1) any nursing school file, if it still exists, is 11 years old. Not all places might save their nursing student records for that length of time. (2) 11 years of not doing any nursing is an undesirable quality in considering the hiring of someone for a clinical nursing position. (3) A reference from work you did 11 years ago is just too old and out of date to consider for a current job. Prospective employers want to see more current references. 11 years of no clinical nursing experience translates to being considered rusty and out of practice. One remedy would be to get into a refresher program. Another would be to hope for a lot of luck and that a very sympathetic manager can be found who is going to be willing to hire a very green nurse that needs a great deal of coaching and precepting.

Good luck to you.

Up Vote Up Vote ×
Specializes in Community Health, Med-Surg, Home Health.

My school didn't allow their instructors to give letters of recommendations, but, I would say that if yours will allow you to, get one from whomever is willing; but I would begin my focus on a clinical instructor since that one would be the closet to seeing how you perform as a nurse. Good luck.

Up Vote Up Vote ×

Grad. School. CRNA. GPA good...GRE Great...recommendation from supervisors, and MD are no problem but faculty from 10 years ago is a challenge. You need the faculty recs. Hmmm

Up Vote Up Vote ×
Specializes in med/surg, telemetry, IV therapy, mgmt.
Grad. School. CRNA. GPA good...GRE Great...recommendation from supervisors, and MD are no problem but faculty from 10 years ago is a challenge. You need the faculty recs. Hmmm

I'd talk to the Dean of your old nursing school and see what kind of help they can give you. If the files are gone, talk to someone at the grad school. You can't be the only applicant who's had this situation come up. A lot of nurses wait a number of years before going from their BSN to grad school and they manage to get in.

Up Vote Up Vote ×

As part of getting ready for graduation, one of our last assignments was to write our own generic letter of reference for the signature of one of our instructors. These letters were critiqued, and when ready and signed, were placed in our files, specifically for the purpose of providing future letters of reference. We were told that one of the reasons for this exercise was that it was impossible for the instructors to remember most of us over the years. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

Up Vote Up Vote ×

Yeah...that was a good idea. My case I think I'm going to take a couple of classes to get a rec....my only solution. Maybe I called the school and ask by Nursing School.

Up Vote Up Vote ×
+ Add a Comment