Chicago Nurses help me please!!

Nurses General Nursing

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Help! I'm an RN with a BSN in Chicago and I am not having any luck finding a suitable job in the city. I am not a new grad but I have been working in outpatient psych since I graduated a few years ago so I am new to a hospital setting. I have applied to hundreds of staff nurse positions and at least 10 new grad opening at Children's Memorial, Northwester, Rush, Loyola, Illinois Masonic, St. Joseph's, Weiss, Mercy, etc etc etc and I can't get a single interview! I was offered a psych job at Thorek but wanted to get into a more medical floor. I recently accepted a job at a Kindred hospital but I'm in orientation right now and I'm realizing that it's just not what I ideally want to be doing. I don't understand why all of these hospitals reject me when I am licensed and have some experience. Does anyone work at these facilities or have any advice for me?!??

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Specializes in Maternal - Child Health.

Despite what anyone may believe, nursing is not a recession-proof profession. We are in a bad economy and hospital admissions are down, hence he need for nurses is down. Therefore employers can be very choosy. It's not that you lack qualifications. It's that there are 10 people ahead of you for every job with past experience that is better suited to the position.

You are more fortunate than many job hunters. You were offered a position that you chose to turn down, and a second one that you accepted. I'm sorry that your current job isn't exactly what you want, but I believe you would be foolish to leave it unless there are quality issues that threaten your license. Your current position will enable you to gain some medical-surgical skills, which you will need if you plan to move on someday to another specialty. If you leave this job too soon, you risk being labeled as a job-hopper. Employers don't want to risk investing money in training a new employee, just to have him leave. That will be much harder to overcome than your lack of med-surg experience.

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Yes I agree, I don't want to be a job hopper but I'm also not the type of person that's going to force myself to go to a job everyday that doesn't make me happy. I have a part time job that I can live off of I'm just worried about going too long without working as an RN. For now I am going to stick with this job but I really want to keep searching for a job in the city at a bigger hospital. If anyone has any advice on that please let me know. Thanks!

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I am a little confused. Do you want to return to psych?

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Specializes in Neuroscience/Neuro-surgery/Med-Surgical/.

Can you check out some local agency work? The ones I have had luck with in the past is

Healthcare Personnel Inc or Nurses PRN. They have per diem and contract work; may have some for psych, while you are looking for something permanent.

I thought i saw some advertisements for Rehab Institute of Chicago as well.

PM me, i can give you some info about a few hospitals downtown.

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I had a hard time finding a job as I had missed all the new grad programs and couldnt get into a Hospital. I ended up going to a Assisted Living/Rehab to get some experience!

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Thanks ya'll! I don't want to get back into psych right now, I need the medsurg experience in order to broaden my options in the future. I have tried agencies but they don't take nurses without hospital experience...

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Jordy,

about your post from March 2010 about Kindred-Chicago-North: how has Kindred been so far? still there? I might apply there soon. I'm currently in LTC, my first RN job.

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