Subacute rehab nurse to Med/surg nurse

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Hi everyone,

I need some advice. After I graduated from nursing school I was unable to get into med/surg nursing however I was lucky to get a job at skilled nursing facility working as subacute rehab nurse for past few years. Now I'm trying to get back into med/surg nursing however is still hard to get in as they asked for experience. I'm thinking about going to agency/travel nurse which it will be more easy to get in. My concern is that will I able to cope/manage with the transition of subacute rehab nurse to med/surg nurse. Is there much different in subacute rehab nurse and med/surg nurse. Is busy on my floor ratio 1:18. Still not computerized in charting. Is it a many steps jumps and will end up falling as agency will not provide weeks of orientation. Is it too risky? Thank you!

Specializes in Med-surg.

Just wondering if a nurse agency take you if you don't have acute-care experiences? I have similar experience as you.

All nurse agencies I've seen require at least one year experience in acute-care setting, so sub-acute won't count.

Hi everyone,

I need some advice. After I graduated from nursing school I was unable to get into med/surg nursing however I was lucky to get a job at skilled nursing facility working as subacute rehab nurse for past few years. Now I'm trying to get back into med/surg nursing however is still hard to get in as they asked for experience. I'm thinking about going to agency/travel nurse which it will be more easy to get in. My concern is that will I able to cope/manage with the transition of subacute rehab nurse to med/surg nurse. Is there much different in subacute rehab nurse and med/surg nurse. Is busy on my floor ratio 1:18. Still not computerized in charting. Is it a many steps jumps and will end up falling as agency will not provide weeks of orientation. Is it too risky? Thank you!

Specializes in Critical Care, Education.

Can you try to move into an LTAC setting? This is a good transition step to acute care - same type of patients you'd take care of in MedSurg, but with longer lengths of stay. You'd be gaining competencies in all the same interventions & managing the same type of patient problems.

Specializes in Med/Surg, Rehab.

Try to move to an LTAC if you have a reputable one in your area. I went from subacute rehab to an LTAC as a stepping stone to acute care. I was really surprised at how much harder it was and how much more I had to learn! I went from 18-20 patients at my previous job to 6 patients at my current job and I'm so much busier! I definitely would not recommend travel nursing for someone without acute care experience. We use agency nurses and they are expected to hit the ground running at each facility with no orientation (just a couple hours to get passwords and learn the layout of the floor).

I see that this post was almost a year ago. I was wondering the same thing, I have subacute and snf experience with a little over a year. I live in So. Cal and even trying to find jobs in LTACH are sooo darn hard to land. I have applied to some registries that have contracts with hospitals in the So cal region. I don't know what its going to take to finally get that acute care experience it seems like everyone wants. It seems to me that registry is my only ticket to gain that type of experience. Any thoughts or comments would be much appreciated.

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