Capstone not what requested

I can't guarantee that it won't hinder you, but I thought I'd share with you my experience. I actually never worked in an ER (externship in the surgical ICU and capstone in neonatal ICU) and was hired into an ER before graduation :)

You know, now that everybody wants to be in ICU or ER, not everyone's gonna get the capstone placement of his/her dreams. Faculty give a good deal of thought to how to place students for capstones; bear in mind that someone who has known you well thinks that this might be a good fit for you to learn things you need to learn and would benefit from. Limiting yourself to one specialty this early in your career is truly not a smart move, and they know you did your internship in ER last year. Time for an injection of variety, get out of your comfort zone. Looked at in that way, it can be something to really look forward to, not something to fuss about.

Whether students believe it or not (and they usually don't, so sometimes we wonder why we waste perfectly good electrons), many, many nurses find their callings in places they never considered and fell into by accident, either because they didn't get the capstone they planned on, the hiring freeze meant they took job B or no job at all, or something else.

Once we had a thread here that dealt with the question, "Did you always want to do the kind of nursing you do, and if not, how did you get here?" I think it's time to restart that.

Short answer is that pretty much nobody does one thing for his/her entire professional career, and a wider variety of experiences makes you more valuable as the years roll by. Don't stress about whether or not you'll get an ER job on graduation (most don't, and that's the truth). Learn something else useful: embrace the moment and see that every experience is a learning experience, and you'll learn more than you expect about more things than you expect anywhere, including oncology (though they do see oncology in the ER too). Good way to go through life.

If it helps, all I wanted to do was OB, and I got placed in a postsurgery unit. Then my first job was in OB. You gotta think that the experience hands on with ANY patients will be beneficial because of the sheer variety you will see in the ER. Your preceptor will be able to teach you so much that you don't know. Dig in, learn tons.