Hard to get OB?

[CEG]

Hello,

I am new to these boards but really enjoying them!

I am a sort-of nursing student right now. I am taking the pre-req courses I can schedule around work (military) until I can start nursing courses next fall.

Just wondering if it is difficult to get a job in labor and delivery or post partum. I know medical/surgical is recommended first, but following that is there a lot of competetition for those jobs? Would it be a really bad idea to seek out OB right away without exploring other areas first?

I enjoyed my own pregnancy and delivery and was able to be a birth coach for a friend which was awesome. I told my husband we will end up having 20 kids if I don't get to work around childbirth :) He is very supportive of the working around childbirth option LOL. I think I will eventually become a midwife but I think the nursing experience is important first.

Thanks!

C

[SmilingBluEyes]

HI, C, and welcome to allnurses and the midwifery/ob/gyn forum! I am also a military wife, so I can relate to the need to work around the husband's schedule. (boy can I).

I am an OB/GYN/Newborn nurse of 7 years' duration now and still love it. I did get a job in labor/delivery right out of nursing school; I was a very lucky new grad. How it came about was, the hospital at which I did my clinicals did NOT have any job openings, except in med-surg and float pool. It was also the only hospital in about a 50 mile radius (rural area). I appled to float, willing to learn a number of areas and bide my time 'til something came up in OB.

Then one day, the nurse manager in OB saw my application, called the school ( I was 3 months from graduating) and asked my director and instructors if they thought I would work out in her dept. Then, she called me, asking me for an interview, saying "are you even interested in OB, I see you are applying to work in our float pool?"....rofl INTERESTED!!!!! IF only she KNEW desperately interested was the case....but I did not tell her that. I did make an appointment and interviewed with her 3 days later.

Anyhow, the rest, as the old cliche goes, is history. I do labor/delivery/postpartum/newborn and also GYN surgical nursing. (a jack of all trades rofl). I do love it and can't see moving on for a while, yet. I like the variety of work I do each time I work.

My advice for you? Just keep on the path you are going. Get the pre-requisite college/university courses for nursing school knocked out first, then apply for entry to nursing school. Keep an open mind while you are in nursing school. In your clinical experiences, you MAY find an area you like even better, hard to say. I loved ICU/CCU, and may have wound up there one day, if OB had not come "knockin" first. As school winds down, look at the hospitals around you, (or the area in which you will live and work)--- begin networking, and finding out who the managers/workers of the OB depts of these places are. Try to keep your ear to the ground and open for any opportunities. Also, if you have a choice during your senior year, spend as much time as you can doing your work in the area you like best. That is an option in some places, where in the last months, students get to concentrate their work and studies in the areas that most interest them.

Good luck and best wishes. Yes, it's true, it can be tough to get into OB right out school, but you have a really widespread nursing shortage working for you (which I did not 7 years ago in rural Oklahoma)---- and you may end up exactly where you want when you graduate. Keep the grades up, and do all you can to learn in those clinical experiences you do have in school. You will get there with enough determination and drive. I did! Please feel free to ask any more questions you have here or me, by PM. There are some really smart nurses here who have YEARS of experience from which to draw on to help you out! Hope this helped you some!