Dont ESN where you want to work?

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The clinical educator at my facility told us students not to ESN where we'd like to get a job because instead of the normal 150 hours of orientation you will okay get 75 as you've already worked there.... Anyone else hear anything like this at their health authority?

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Specializes in Acute Care, Rehab, Palliative.

What is ESN?

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ESN employed student nurse.

Called different things in various provinces and health authorities.

Who gets 150 hours of orientation? Around my world it's three day shifts and two of whatever other shift you are hired for.

If you spent time working on a unit as a paid employee with a reduced workload (ESN) why would you need 150 hours of orientation to pick up what you weren't permitted to do previously?

It sounds harsh but in the current job market, many would jump at the offer.

The only way to know for sure is to ask the health authority that would be employing you

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Specializes in Acute Care, Rehab, Palliative.

I don't think they have ESN in Ontario but I could be wrong.I did my final consolidation on the floor I was hired on. I had no orientation. I just started working.lol

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Never heard of ESN before (ON), or getting 150h of orientation.

I would take any job that gets your foot in the door and experience on your resume

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I haven't heard that here. However, it's possible you wouldn't need as much orientation simply because you worked there. I was floating to the telemetry department for months before they thought to give me a formal orientation, because I had spent six weeks there as a forth-year student in my final practicum and knew the unit. Honestly I think if you can get an ESN job and later an RN job at the same facility, you will benefit from the experience and knowledge of the place when you start off as a new nurse, and even if you ended up with fewer orientation hours, well, maybe you didn't need them anyway. Or you do, and you ask for more.

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You would be lucky to be a able to be a student nurse on a unit you would like to work on! Or any other unit for that matter. That's weird advice from some other employment era. Nurses hardly get any orientation anyway.

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He said the challenge was- as a student nurse you have a limited scope of practice and as soon as you get hired and you're done your orientation your expected to work within the RN scope of practice which includes obviously more things then a ESN, so you'd want as many orientation hours as possible to practice the skills you wouldn't have got to practice--but yeah in my health authority in BC you get a 150 hours of orientation I guess we are lucky. I could care less if I only got half of the hours as long as I got a job hahaha. Just found it kind of strange.

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I was an ESN in FHA in Vancouver. When I got hired as an RN I got 75 hours of orientation instead of 150 (which is what non-ESNs got). For me, this was adequate. You will already know the layout of the unit, the staff, types or documentation etc. You will be at a greater advantage! I don't know why someone would tell you otherwise. ESN was a great way to gain extra clinical experience and make money at the same time. Depending on your manager you can always request more hours for orientation if you don't feel ready (I know someone who did).

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He is the clinical educator at a FHA facility- so 75 hours is the standard RN orientation?

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If you were an ESN on the unit you get 75 hours. If you were not you get 150. The few people I know who were ESNs on more specialized units (like emerg) got more hours.

Also remember that being an ESN will increase your chances of being hired in the first place :) jobs for new grads in metro vancouver aren't always easy to find

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