Are too many certifications a bad thing?

[Ruger8mm]

As a new RN grad I've been working hard at attaining all kinds of certifications and course completions. ACLS, PALS, ATLS, Rapid STEMI identification, Stroke assessment, with NRP, TNCC, and CCRN coming up soon. Thankfully as an echocardiographer I've convinced the hospital I work at to send me to all these classes on thier dime. But I'm not a staff RN here yet.

Does a med/surg hiring manager look at that and think "he'll jump ship and go to speciality critical care as soon as he can." Does that reduce my chances for a job?

[Ruger8mm]

So just out of pure curiosity.......where is the line between being proud of yourself and being arrogant?

For or the record I am excited to be a subordinate and have someone with experience and skills teach me.

Remember, this is the net. You can't get non-verbals and context from the net. Just words and how you perceive them.

[JustBeachyNurse, LPN]

So just out of pure curiosity.......where is the line between being proud of yourself and being arrogant?

For or the record I am excited to be a subordinate and have someone with experience and skills teach me.

Remember, this is the net. You can't get non-verbals and context from the net. Just words and how you perceive them.

I think your choice of words are coming across as arrogant and egocentric. Yes you can have too many certificates as a new grad seeking employment. Credentials imply competence and experience not just the ability to perform skills and pass a written test. A new grad with TNCC & CEN does not imply competence even if previously worked as an ED tech.

I'd be careful listing triage as a skill on your resume. Most state NPAs prohibit anyone but a registered nurse from triaging. Taking vitals, handing out bandages or ice packs and noting chief complaint does not count as triage in most EDs that's considered patient check in. Triage is a skill that requires assessment that is generally relegated to those licensed as an RN or higher. Most ED's only assign experienced nurses to the role of triage because of the necessary skills and experience

[Ruger8mm]

I think your choice of words are coming across as arrogant and egocentric.

Yep, just taken out of context due to the net. I chose my words poorly. No worries, happens a lot.

[blackribbon]

The line is when people start avoiding you. Then you know you have crossed it. If you come across in real life as you do on paper, I would quietly avoid you unless you were specifically asking me for help. And I am the nurse who has handed out my cell number to newbies and told them to call me at 2am if they can't find help on the floor or just needed a word of encouragement to help them get through their shift. I think the difference is when your actual experience doesn't match your confidence level. And anyone who would rather not be getting actual RN experience for 4 months while waiting for a perfect job would be another sign of arrogance. If they haven't offered you an in-house transfer in this amount of time to an RN position, I'd either assume that yours was the only hospital in the US that didn't need new nurses or that there is something wrong with your attitude or skill set. You are the cheaper new hire because you don't need all the new employee stuff. We had a nurse tech who thought she was a shoe-in for an RN position on our floor...the nurse manager told her there wouldn't be any opening for several months. Funny, after she accepted a position on another floor, we immediately had two openings. She was a smart cookie but I wasn't ever happy when I knew she was my nurse tech for the day because she was lazy and above doing her job the closer she got to graduation. We have another tech who is probably walking a thin line and she was one of my favorite techs when I started. Arrogance will get you no where. There are plenty of other new grads who are just as smart and don't disrupt the cohesiveness of the floor.

You do know that with each certification, you also are held to a higher standard legally since you are purporting that you are now an "expert"? My nursing instructors advised us to go slowly on any certification that did not come with a financial incentive...because it did mean we would be held to a higher standard if brought into court. Pick and choose carefully.

[gardendigger]

Some of the certifications require job experience before you can test.

[emmy27]

So just out of pure curiosity.......where is the line between being proud of yourself and being arrogant?

For or the record I am excited to be a subordinate and have someone with experience and skills teach me.

Remember, this is the net. You can't get non-verbals and context from the net. Just words and how you perceive them.

This is true. But we're trying to tell you that some of your immediate goals in themselves are signs of either arrogance or ignorance (like wanting to obtain certifications in expertise you don't yet have now), and your way of speaking about your classmates and your professional goals smacks of arrogance in content. Maybe there's a way of saying these things that doesn't come off as arrogant in person, but I can't imagine the nonverbals that would make a new grad announcing that their classmates who are less deserving have been hired and they haven't and they think it's because they are overqualified not sound arrogant.

Again, this is just how you're coming off. You may be a delightful, humble, easy-to-work-with person in the flesh, we really don't know. We're just trying to tell you how you're coming off here- and you know, it may be totally true that some of your now-employed classmates were poor students compared to you. Which is really all the more reason it might be time to examine how you're coming off to nurse managers.

I've precepted and worked with a lot of students and new grads over the years, and universally the number one reason students weren't offered jobs on a unit where they precepted was not that they didn't know enough (nobody expects new grads to be experts)- it was that they thought they knew more than they did. It's much easier, and much safer, to boost the confidence and competency of someone who recognizes their own deficiencies (all new grads are deficient in some way in nearly every aspect of practice) than to rein in someone who believes they know more than they do, and most of the serious errors I've observed in orientees and preceptees have been mistakes of overconfidence. Given the choice between a new grad who is anxious about what they don't know (and who will ask questions before acting because of it) and a new grad who is confident that they know more than anyone else on their level (and will plunge ahead without questioning because hey, they've got this!), I'll take the anxious one every time. I don't think I'm alone in that.

One of my nursing school instructors once told us that nursing school is designed to produce "educable incompetents." That is, that no matter how good we were in school, nursing is such a broad and deep field that we would arrive on our first units knowing very little of what we actually needed to know to practice there on our own, but we would know enough of the basics of nursing that our preceptors could teach us how to be X nurses efficiently. I- an overachieving teacher's pet- bristled at this at the time. But man, it's true. And switching specialties several years in to licensure was another reminder that even with years of practicing in one area or adjacent to a given specialty, when you change professions or specialties, you're dropping multiple rungs on the ladder of competency, and it takes time and exposure to actual practice to climb back up. Some of your skills will transfer (being an EMT and having worked in an ER will give you a leg up in terms of familiarity with the way things run if you become an ER RN), but there are always more that are new. This goes both ways- I guarantee an ICU nurse or ER nurse working their first night shift on a GI med surge floor with seven geriatric

It's great to have goals, it's great to be proud of your achievements, and it's great to recognize where your past professions might inform your new career. But it's also a good idea to be aware that it's in your own and your patients' best interest to recognize that as a new grad on any unit, including m/s, there is still a vast, deep pool of knowledge you haven't begun to touch, and take your time to soak some of it up. And then you have to figure out how to communicate to hiring managers that credentials or not, you do recognize that.

[calivianya, BSN, RN]

So just out of pure curiosity.......where is the line between being proud of yourself and being arrogant?

I had this problem a lot when I was younger because I was a very arrogant person. I learned the hard way that the line is keeping my mouth shut. It is perfectly possible to be proud of yourself quietly without any outside recognition.

People pay attention to their own lives, and may pay attention to yours in whatever very small ways your life intersects with theirs, but in general, random people you run into in life don't care about you at all. They're too busy thinking about their own lives to even notice yours, you know what I mean? You are important to YOU, obviously, but you are not important to other people, and just telling them why you are important/knowledgeable/whatever is just going to turn them off. If you want people to respect you and really see you as an asset, you have to do it by finding what they are interested in and bringing something to the table in that particular area.

I.e. if you are talking to a hiring manager, and you ask her what sorts of projects are going on in her unit and she says they are piloting a new palliative care program, being excited about palliative care and increasing the number of people who die with dignity in the hospital is going to get you a lot farther with that manager than having any number of specialty certs.

[Oceanpacific]

I think you come off as over-confident. Which can be dangerously close to arrogant. What's missing for me is any expressed desire to start your nursing career on a unit that isn't interesting to you. Interesting for you seems to be coming in all gangbusters and using some cool gadgets and performing specific specialized tasks. There is nothing wrong with that, and you can become a very competent technician; I have no doubt of this.

Even emergency situations are best handled by someone with a "whole person approach". This includes things like: Asking the patient if he/she wants someone to be called and notified of the emergency. Offering warm blankets and holding someone's hand. Making sure a roommate is consoled and moved to another area during a code. Noticing if your frequent flyer patient is cold or hungry.

Then there is down time.

I don't think you are an arrogant person because you have a willingness to reconsider the way you present yourself and have managed not to become defensive in the face of some pretty direct posts.

[Ruger8mm]

Learning opportunity. Everything is a learning opportunity. Even discussing things on here.

[AcuteHD]

I call ********.

My ER triage is staffed with paramedics, don't know if it's common practice, but it's not *****.

My advice to OP is to chill a bit. There's going to be plenty of challenges and learning opportunities wherever you land. Get the certs you need when you need them. Yes, you are coming across as arrogant, but we're not seeing the whole of your personality. Arrogant people can be likable, humble people can be mean. We don't know you. There's a LOT of good advice on this thread, thanks for starting it.

[rollieschmollie]

My ER triage is staffed with paramedics, don't know if it's common practice, but it's not *****.

My advice to OP is to chill a bit. There's going to be plenty of challenges and learning opportunities wherever you land. Get the certs you need when you need them. Yes, you are coming across as arrogant, but we're not seeing the whole of your personality. Arrogant people can be likable, humble people can be mean. We don't know you. There's a LOT of good advice on this thread, thanks for starting it.

From what he said he was an EMT, the ER he worked hired EMT-B's as techs. He did not say he was a paramedic, unless I misread. A paramedic doing triage, yes...an EMT-B/ER tech, no.

[TheNGTKingRN]

Your posts come off incredibly arrogant.