Chance of ADN to get a Hospital Job?

[nalaa83]

I am a second year Nursing student and my classmates and I was having a discussion about jobs after Nursing. So one of my instructors stated that since we are getting an Associates Degree the chances of us getting a hospital job is slim and ADN nurses are more likely to work in a Nursing home. I wanted to know has anyone else heard this? If so what is your prospective on this matter?

[OhioCCRN, MSN, NP]

if you want to get your masters, then sure obviously you need a BSN.

but if you want to work on the floor, an ADN is sufficient and sometimes better. my friends at the university complain that they don't get as much clinical experience as i do. they're doing a lot of paper writing and busy book work instead of spending as much time as possible on the floor.]

Disagree! You can bridge from an ASN (RN) to a Masters

http://fpb.case.edu/msn/rntomsn.shtm

Just to clarify, a BSN is a good idea especially with some hospitals current obsession with magnet status, but that should not deter you from furthering your education. Knowledge is power!

[kbrn2002, ADN, RN]

I have a hospital job now and I'm not even finished with my ADN yet - just wrapping up my first year. They hired me part time with a plan to hire me full time in nursing once I finish my degree.

Sorry to say, but your instructor is full of it.

Instructor is not necessarily "full of it." The ADN vs BSN hiring depends on where you live and /or plan to work. Some areas are perfectly happy to hire ADN nurses, others not so much. Where I live we have two major health care providers, one still has a very few ADN positions, the other has none- all open postings say BSN required, and many of those are BSN + at least 1 year of acute care experience required.

[baldee]

Cheapest person gets the job: plan and simple, unfortunately.

Since that is the motto up and down the organization, the quality of selection boils down to that or indeterminable nuisances of an unqualified person.

Life's a ***** and then you die.

:nurse:

[holisticallyminded]

Hey all, it depends on your area of course, but for most of the newbies in my area, all the networking, education, volunteering, working as a CNA/tech before graduation, going to job fairs, etc, hasn't worked for people because hospitals are not hiring new grads. Period. It's a closed shop. They don't have to hire. And there are too many new nurses.

I've given this advice before. The best thing you can do as a student right now is to get a job in a small community hospital as tech/CNA, work your a** off and hope to god they'll keep you on. And/or start doing some major Red Cross disaster relief. Something that gives you real experience.

[baldee]

So your hypothesis is to take time and resources you do not have and pray like hell? Interesting and intellectual. However, by making sure you are the bottom line dollar investment for the hospital with adequate education appears to be significantly higher chance of acceptance for initial experience. As well, it is possible. Of course if you are not supporting yourself, then I'd expect you to do those things even though it shows you have more spare time than critical missions in your life. Otherwise, they are not probable nor advisable to accomplish.

[studentinnursing]

So your hypothesis is to take time and resources you do not have and pray like hell? Interesting and intellectual. However, by making sure you are the bottom line dollar investment for the hospital with adequate education appears to be significantly higher chance of acceptance for initial experience. As well, it is possible. Of course if you are not supporting yourself, then I'd expect you to do those things even though it shows you have more spare time than critical missions in your life. Otherwise, they are not probable nor advisable to accomplish.

Pessimistic?

I support two children and was still going to volunteer to get experience and get "in"; my critical mission is to help people whether I get paid for it or not. First, I applied for a job and got it. I took a cut in pay to help save lives at a trauma center, not to be rich. In Florida, $13 an hour isn't bad for a PCT, and they offer a critical care internship once I am an RN, next year; more than one person offered this because they believe I can do it not because they picked my name out of hat. I got full benefits on day one for my family and myself, can't always put a price on things. Funny, everyone there, along with my instructors, let me know how hard it is to get in the ER there, and I did it, and you just seemed to belittle a person's accomplishment beyond belief. I don't care, but I do want to make it clear not everyone is in it for the money.

No, the world is how one perceives it, and unfortunately, some may never be pleased with the world, as some perceive things in such a way that he/she is never happy and maybe, just maybe, he/she will try to make everyone else as miserable as he/she is.

I'd do my job for free if it fed, housed, and clothed my kids.

Have a wonderful day! And good luck to everyone out there; every hospital in which I have done clinicals hires new grads and most get jobs before graduating. I know other students, just in my clinical group, who got PCT jobs and offered RN upon graduation during first and second semesters. Keep trying!

[holisticallyminded]

"So your hypothesis is to take time and resources you do not have and pray like hell? Interesting and intellectual. However, by making sure you are the bottom line dollar investment for the hospital with adequate education appears to be significantly higher chance of acceptance for initial experience. As well, it is possible. Of course if you are not supporting yourself, then I'd expect you to do those things even though it shows you have more spare time than critical missions in your life. Otherwise, they are not probable nor advisable to accomplish."

Actually, no, I wasn't advocating praying silly. You didn't read my post. As I previously stated, my area is saturated with new nurses and hospitals aren't hiring even the student nurses they take on. They just don't want to pay to train. So in this case, the degree (and even experience) isn't enough. Networking? Great if hiring is happening. If not......

So you have to either put yourself over the top with experience (and if you can't get paid experience, you need to try unpaid, and which is why I mentioned disaster relief- it's actually an awesome way to get experience) or to find a job in a smaller hospital as a tech while you're in school (the big ones here are the last to hire) where they may be likely to hire newbies and train them without an official residency program, etc. Everyone that I graduated with who did this got jobs this way. The rest of us (I worked in a large regional facility for five years) had to deal with hiring freezes and have ended up doing crappy LTC type of work. I am currently planning some pretty crazy stuff to get out of this mess. You want to talk about resources! Forget it. I haven't the time or the money but the choice is still pretty clear. Do something I dislike very much or fight like hell to get out of it.

Good luck to all of you. Especially to those who haven't graduated and still have time. The rest of us will just have to figure it out as we go along.

[cnmbfa]

The bottom line on those kinds of statements is hardly ever the bottom line.

The majority of the studies I've read that many tout as evidence for better patient outcomes with the employment of BSN prepared nurses in higher number, all fail to evaluate outcomes based on educational preparation alone. In fact, they most often lump educational preparation together with staffing (nurse/patient ratios), which proves to have a much stronger impact on patient outcomes than educational preparation - not an accurate portrayal.

There is no way to separate out which specific patients (and thus specific outcomes) were related to care by ADN or BSN nurses. Do you know of any places where you can guarantee that the patients will only encounter patients from one group or the other? The inability to spearate out which nurses cared for which patients does not dilute the results, which in some of the studies looked at the percentage of BSNs on comparable units. and, several of these studies controlled for staffing levels, and/or compared only ICU to ICU, etc.

If, as you suggest, the studies are not solid, then why have the Magnet program, the RWJ Future of Nursing Initiative, and more called for BSNs to become the norm if that recommendation is not well founded?

Can you point me to even one study that shows a neutral impact (no benefit) of increasing levels of nurse education? I doubt it.