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

[K1,RN]

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! ).

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

Please help?

Thanks!

[K1,RN]

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."

[HouTx, BSN, MSN, EdD]

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.