Advice for cover letter phrasing for ambulatory care to critical care?

Nurses Job Hunt

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I need help with phrasing my cover letter.

I graduated in 2011, job searched for 6months and finally took the first one offered to me. I have since realized it probably wasn't the best idea as I have now been "stuck" in an out patient treatment center for a primary care clinic (I signed a two year contract in exchange for a transition to practice program). My dream occupational home is an ICU. Eventually (think 20yr plan lol) I would like to become a Doctor of Nursing practice focusing on adult gerontological acute care and doing research.

The advice I have received/followed so far is to:

Apply to medical/surgical (med-surg) floors and then change departments after experience

Apply to residencies/transition to practice programs

Make sure to craft the resume and cover letter to highlight my transferable skills (IV start and maintenance, wound care, injectable medications, etc)

I have done all of the above, though probably not applied frequently enough (yet).

What I am mostly concerned about is the phrasing in my cover letter about why I want to transition to hospital.

Basically, primary care does not have a standardized acuity/staffing model. I frequently find myself on the verge of providing unsafe care because we see so many people, so quickly (record is during flu season four of us saw 298). I want to be able to focus on a few patients at a time (5 in med surge, 1-2 in ICU) and give them quality care, not just (barely) safe care.

I also want to go home at the end of my shift knowing that someone else is taking care of the patient while I sleep (not worrying about remembering to call the patient day the next day, etc).

And last but not least, every possible career trajectory I am interested requires 2-5 years of hospital experience.

My current cover letter phrasing is:

"I want to transition to the hospital because I want to work with a well-structured team, in a time-sensitive environment, to provide high quality, compassionate, and patient-centered care to a few high acuity patients at a time."

Besides the fact that I'm pretty sure it's a run-on sentence, it sounds really stilted. And my Aunt (who is not a nurse, but very good at cover letters) thinks the phrasing could imply poor work ethic (laziness! :o ).

Wow long post! but now you know the whole story :)

Please help?

Thanks!

K1,RN

6 Posts

Alternate phrasing: "I want to transition to the hospital because I want to work with a well-structured team to focus on providing a smaller number of high-acuity patients with the high quality, compassionate, patient-centered care they deserve."

Specializes in Critical Care, Education.

Be sure to market your skills and abilities. Even though you'll need to learn new technical skills and routines, there are some basics that you probably already have... such as: communication, patient teaching, organization/prioritization, etc. If you have also been involved in any 'admin' process such as policy development/review, quality improvement, peer review, scheduling.. be sure to include these.

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