I am in my last semester of Nursing school..YAYYY! and it has been a HARD road to get here but now that I'm almost done I'm starting to think about working and applying. I have been a tech on a specialty unit for 5 years now and I love me job and would like to continue working there as a RN. I am a hard worker and I know my unit and it shows because the DON for our unit told me personally to go speak with my new manager of 4 months about what positions they could offer me, well I did this and to my surprise she said I had to wait until AFTER I passed my boards to apply:(. At this point I was shock because 3 of our techs who just graduated from nursing school in May were all offered positions in March and didn't take their boards until June. So I mentioned this to my manager and she said "oh the policy has changed you have to wait now". An because she went on a hiring frenzy we have about 15 new nurses on the unit, so I have to wait until someone quits in order to have a position. Well after our meeting I decided to call HR for our hospital just to ask about the new policy and if it was the entire hospital, I was told she didn't know anything about it and its up to my manager and she could hire me up to 6mths in advance and if I was not already an employee there I could apply up to 2mths in advance.
This entire thing had me in tears, I didn't understand why I have to wait and why she lied to me. FYI I am African American and the other girls where Caucasian. Is this discrimination?? Also we do have about 6 out of 15 African Americans on our unit as Techs but only 2 out 45 +nurses are African American. (Who have been there for 40 + years) And NONE of the new nurses she hired are AA either.
As one poster put it "life is not fair" and that is true however, discrimination is illegal and if I had proof that she has discriminated in her hiring in the past I would most certainly file a complaint. I am sick of people having a "get over it attitude" when someone is discriminated against. Usually the ones that could care less don't care because it does not effect them in any way.
As one poster put it "life is not fair" and that is true however, discrimination is illegal and if I had proof that she has discriminated in her hiring in the past I would most certainly file a complaint. I am sick of people having a "get over it attitude" when someone is discriminated against. Usually the ones that could care less don't care because it does not effect them in any way.
YES! its not a good feeling at all, esp when you work so hard and go above and beyond to only have your work ethic get over looked by something that's out of my control.
Specializes in Cardiac, Home Health, Primary Care.
I do over think...I just wanted to be treated like the other techs now nurses when they secured their position 3 months in advance. If my manager would have just been honest and not lie and say its a hospital policy. That just seems shady to me.. And a nursing student im friends with my current manager was her old manger for over 6 years and she also verified that she NEVER hired AA nurses on her previous unit only AA techs.
If you're concerned you can bring it up with whoever is over her to discuss the issue. At my hospital there is an administrative person over clinical people including nurses.
As one poster put it "life is not fair" and that is true however, discrimination is illegal and if I had proof that she has discriminated in her hiring in the past I would most certainly file a complaint. I am sick of people having a "get over it attitude" when someone is discriminated against. Usually the ones that could care less don't care because it does not effect them in any way.
I'm do not condone discrimination or racism especially when it comes to employment. I still believe that racism is alive , I mean segregation only ending 50 years ago. Proving discrimination can be very difficult and she may still end up where she started or even worse off.
There is no way anyone on this nursing forum could possibly know if your manager is discriminating against you solely for your race. We have absolutely no idea what kind of impression you have made on her regarding your work ethic, your decision making ability, etc. The statistics you quote may well raise questions, but those alone do not provide us with a definitive answer.
It sounds like she has too many new nurses right now and that's why she isn't willing to hire you early. If you graduated the semester before, you'd probably have started with the others. I just don't like when people start making the assumption of "I'm black, I didn't get hired, therefore I was discriminated against". There's no way to know that unless she always passes over qualified black applicants. If she hires another new grad early, then I'd probably go to her and again ask for feedback about why you weren't hired. It's possible that she doesn't see you as the great employee you believe yourself to be. Just stay open minded because there are many possibilities for not getting hired.
OP, your manager is the one that screwed up here. She promised you something that she wasn't allowed to promise. Now everyone is backpedaling. It's not discrimination, but your direct manager was wrong. This happened to me one time when I was young. I worked for The Gap back in it's heyday. In the early 90's. I was a very good hard-working employee who never missed a day and always came in if they needed me. Our assistant managers had quit and my store manager told me I would make a great assistant for her and she started prepping me for the job. Turns out, the job wasn't hers to offer. How was I to know, I thought as the manager she made the hiring decisions. It was her district manager's call and she did not want to offer the job to me. Everybody tried to smooth things over and I was told I could be a key-holding manager. I was told I didn't have enough experience. Then she hired two yahoos from outside the company with no management experience and my key-holding position magically disappeared after 2 weeks, I was told it wasn't in the budget. I was 18 at the time, these girls were in their early twenties. The only retail experience the one had was behind the jewelry counter at Penney's. I was highly insulted.
I started applying for new positions after that. I got a good job as a dept manager when a new sporting goods company moved into town. They offered me full-time, benefits, and a substantial raise. Needless to say, I left The Gap in the dust and it was the best decision I ever made. It was a blessing-in-disguise that happened to me.
I know you are angry and you have every right to be. I was too. But later on in life, I realized what the issue was. The store manager preliminarily offered me a job that was not hers to offer. I'm guessing your manager did the same. Start applying elsewhere. Your company will lose a great employee, while another gains. And in a few years, this will be a distant memory.
OP, at this time I can't say it is discrimination or not; I will say, as an African American and knowing and understanding that history of how we can statistically get passed over for positions, right now what you described is a surplus of nurse hires and there is no position.
I was in a practical nurse program when the hospital I thought was going to stay forever-floor had the same makeup that you described-started phasing out LPNs-I could've got hired, but my former manager became the director of my unit wanted NO LPNs anymore. I didn't feel slighted, even though I wanted to stay at that unit and use it to enter Critical Care or Emergency Nursing, I went into another specialty and gained so much experience that helped me shaped the nurse that I am; I currently worked in a Level I Trauma Pedi ED. It took me ten years to get here, but I have arrived.
You may have to go a different path to get towards your destination; there are going to be a ton of other challenges that will shape you as a nurse-including discrimination and outright bias and racism from your patients-and you will have to find ways to shape your practice despite those challenges.
As far as discrimination I can't really comment because I don't work on your unit. As far the job, It might not have anything to do with not taking your test yet. I worked a while on a general care floor and if they liked you as a tech they would hire you as a nurse if they had the positions. When I moved to an ICU I asked if they do the same for techs they like and she said its very unlikely no matter how much they like you. It could be different at your hospital but at the one I work at they have to post the job still and go through the normal hiring process even if they know they want to give you the job. It was explained to me that for ICU positions the requirements are usually some sort of experience like ICU or step down units. When they hire one of their techs right out of grad school they have to changes the posting to graduate nurse which means no experience and opens the door for many more applications. On top of that there are usually rules they follow like taking internal employees over external and I believe I was told they have to hire union employees over non union employees. As a tech we aren't part of the nursing union so when a graduate nurse position is posted for an ICU or specialty unit the odds of actually getting the job even if the manager wants you is slim to none.
I don't know the situation, but nothing from what you posted sounds like discrimination.
Your manager just hired 15 new nurses, and then has three more on deck. She can't offer you a position that is already filled by someone else. If she just hired 15 new nurses, then she must have had a ton of holes to fill, and was probably in desperate need when she offered jobs to the three new grads before they passed boards.
As far as the policy thing goes...it might not be a hospital wide policy, it could be her personal policy that she just decided on. It seems likely that she could have offered jobs to new grads who ended up failing the NCLEX, causing her to have to scramble to interview and fill spots. I know if that was me, I'd adopt my own policy on the situation, even if the hospital technically allowed me to hired people before they got their license.
The situation sounds kind of all over the place to flatly say it's discrimination. It just seems like a bad deal overall. I will tell you though, as far as policies go and who knows what, a lot of times things change and the word doesn't get passed on well until enough people are out of the loop and complain and then they have to send out memos and reminders and have people sign off saying they've read the revision to the policy. It's the pits working in administration. Either way, keep kicking butt and see what happens. Maybe something will change soon. Good luck!
I like to believe that people make honest mistakes and sometime speak out of turn. Does that them a racist? If you have a gut feeling youre being discriminated against, then this is not someplace you want to practice nursing. But, may I suggest you try to look at things from management's position: they had vacancies and MAYBE, just maybe the most qualified (for whatever reason) happen to be Caucasian. Face facts, nursing is primarily Caucasian women. As you grow in life and in this profession, you will learn that life isn't always fair. To your benefit, you may, in fact be right and they are being unfair to you because if your skin tone. I'm sure it's not the first and probably won't be the last. Rise above it, continue to shine and perform professionally. You will come out on top in the end. Much luck to you!!
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Mslecia20
123 Posts
As one poster put it "life is not fair" and that is true however, discrimination is illegal and if I had proof that she has discriminated in her hiring in the past I would most certainly file a complaint. I am sick of people having a "get over it attitude" when someone is discriminated against. Usually the ones that could care less don't care because it does not effect them in any way.