Are there enough "New-grad" positions in your area?

tachybradyRN · Mar 8, 2009

I'm from Long Island and new grad positions, especially for ADN nurses, are scarce.

expo4u · Mar 8, 2009

Not many here in st louis. Most people finding it very hard to find jobs.

fiveofpeep · Mar 8, 2009

nope. not in nor or so cal:hlk:

Multicollinearity, BSN, RN · Mar 8, 2009

Some new grads are getting jobs and some are not. I've heard some of last semester's graduating class are continuing to work in their old jobs as CNAs and techs. Newly licensed RNs working as CNAs - and grateful for the paycheck.

I'm prepared to move anywhere in the United States in a few months when I graduate.

NewmanFamily6 · Mar 8, 2009

I also graduate in May. I can tell you here in Southwest VA that there are definitely not enough New Grad positions. The folks who haven't started applying are really going to have a tough time:(

lamazeteacher · Mar 11, 2009

When I first heard about the "new grad" programs at hospitals, I wondered why it was necessary to separate the newly educated nurses from the other new hirees, in orientation. Then I was told how little clinical experience was offered in college and university schools of nursing. I guess there was a need to get new grads up to speed and it takes longer, requiring hospital expenditures for the staff supervising their orientations.

So decisions could have been made when the large corporations that own hospitals now, needed to cut programs (to pay those shiny shoed execs more?), and they let those expensive "new grad" programs go, in favor of hiring more experienced nurses.

Now the question of how newly educated nurses can get the experience they need, arises. It seems to me that if the nursing schools aren't graduating folks who are ready to "hit the ground running", they'd better do that. So they'll need to hire more clinical instructors and offer more clinical courses....... Summers and winter and spring breaks should be the time for that, I think (back in my day, we never had those amounts of free time - the school year was from Sept. to Sept., with the day of major holidays off). Maybe the numbers of med errors will decrease after that happens. One of my classmates was suspended for 3 months, for giving MOM to the wrong patient...... She graduated 6 months after the rest of us.

Read the book Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, regarding the damage done to school children's ability to retain information when they have long breaks from school......

srahamim, ASN, MSN · Mar 11, 2009

Now the question of how newly educated nurses can get the experience they need, arises. It seems to me that if the nursing schools aren't graduating folks who are ready to "hit the ground running", they'd better do that. So they'll need to hire more clinical instructors and offer more clinical courses......

What you are suggesting is a good idea except... clinical sites are necessary for this. In some areas maybe this is practical but in the Silicon Valley area of northern California there are way more schools (both RN and LVN) looking for clinical opportunities than there are hospitals able/willing to provide it.....

All of it is a catch 22 that's for sure!

jpeters84 · Mar 11, 2009

I, for one, would love more clinical experience. I think it is almost criminal that I pay as much as I do for my nursing education (or at least go into debt) and get as little clinical training as I do. The thought that I'm a year away from graduation and have had so few hours on the floor is frightening. Whenever I bring this up to the professors and deans at my school they all have the same responses: 1)that BSN programs are focused on educating nursing leaders and that the emphasis is based more on leadership skills and critical thinking than on clinical skills 2) that clinical skills can be learned quickly onsite as a professional but leadership skills need to be learned in the academic environement (which sounds like B.S. to me) 3) that there are not enough clinical sites as there is let alone trying to expand our hours.

Quite frankly I don't understand why nursing education is done the way it is at all. Nothing about it seems logical. There are very few students that are satisfied with the way their nursing education is going. And to be 100% honest I don't know that a few more clinical hours is necessarily going to make a nursing student ready to hit the ground running as a professional nurse. I think it would take more like an extra hundreds of hours of experience for a nursing student to feel clinically competent to walk on that floor with minimum supervision as a professional nurse.

I am all for new grad programs and I am very angry at these hopsitals that are cutting these programs. I know times are tough but how do they think that their nurses of the future are going to trained? It's such a short-sighted maneuver and with the fewer clinical hours of education in nursing schools and the bad economy translating to less nurses and more patient it's an even more dangerous environment for hospitals to be cutting these very necessary programs. I think nursing education needs to be done more like medical education where the first year is a mandatory internship and that there's a match program where students get matched up to hospitals and have a guarenteed year's worth of experience under supervision and with fewer patients while they gain competency. I truly do think this would benefit everyone. Just my 2 cents...

fiveofpeep · Mar 11, 2009

In five to ten years when the shortage is bad because people finally had to retire, they will be banging down our doors. But that is definitely not any consolation now :-/

waitingforthedream · Mar 11, 2009

LOL HAHAHAHA Jobs for new grads. Not in Jersey. Impossible when ever job requires experience and their are hundreds and hundreds of jobs posted, just not for newbies! :cry:

5macinte · Mar 11, 2009

I'm graduating in May from a nursing school in Buffalo NY. Most area hospitals are teaching hospitals who are hiring new grads with really great orientation programs. If you can take the cold its a great place to start!