Advancing from Rehab Nursing

[mandyd87]

Hi all! I am a new grad RN waited 6 months to find a job. Just accrued an offer from a well known acute rehab facility near me. Ultimately, in the future, I want to end up in the ER or ICU... My question is will I be considered the same as other new grads when I go to apply at a hospital? I don't want my time here to be a waste and still be considered to have no experience when I apply to other jobs in the future. Especially now that everything is done online, will I have to click "0" years when they ask how many years of experience do you have related this field (whatever the unit is that I would be applying to). I am scared that i will be automatically tossed aside for job opportunities because on paper I will still look like a new grad. Any advice? Anyone else have a similar situation?

[mandyd87]

Meant to say I just *accepted an offer

[mmm8652]

I don't think that will be a problem if you want to move on to ER or ICU. A lot of times they just ask for at least 1-3 years acute care experience. Now since you say rehab I assume you will be hanging antibiotics and giving pain meds. as well. Those will both be great experience for you. You might even be giving blood. Remember you'll probably be dealing with a lot of elderly people and they almost always come with other problems-DM, hypertension,etc. You will probably get a lot of ortho. experience as well and that would be really helpful in ICU like for patients that had a MVA and have others problems as well. I feel really bad for new grads because I know a lot of places won't hire new grads but if they won't get experience unless they get hired! Hope this was helpful. Good luck.

[mandyd87]

Thank you so much! That is very helpful. And yes so many nurses I know all got jobs within weeks after graduating and that is because they graduated like 5-8 years ago. It's so discouraging now to see how many nurses can't find jobs as are out of work. Us new grads can't even go for what were interested, we just have to take what we can get. I am lucky to have gotten this job offer. I am going to be on the ortho unit but even the nurse manager referred to it as the "boring" unit because its all hip and knee replacements. So hopefully I get some quality experience. Plus I think after 6 months I can float to other units. I just hope in the long run I don't get held back from doing what I really want to do because this isn't considered by some to be real "acute care" experience.

[TheCommuter, BSN, RN]

I work at an acute rehab hospital, and during my time there, received two job offers to work med/surg and oncology overflow at two different local acute care hospitals. So, there is hope for acute care hospital employment after having worked in rehab.

However, I still work in rehab. I could not accept the hospital job offers because the pay being offered to me was too low for me to handle.