Do Hospitals look at your grades before hiring a new grad?

cursenurse · May 20, 2006

I'm just curious about this because in the nursing student forum a lot of people have said that hospitals look at your grades and some require a 3.0 GPA. But then from what I've heard at my school is that grades don't really matter... all that matters is that you have that RN after your name. Its also been drilled into my head that C Still = RN.
My final grade of nursing fundamentals was a C, and med surg was a C. Now I'm in critical care, ICU/CCU and my grade is a C too. Should I worry that I'm not going to find a job with grades like this? I mean geez... nursing school is hard enough ..... I thought passing was good enough. I don't know what I'd have to do to make A's??? Maybe give up sleeping and became a caffiene addict... I dunno.

i have never heard of a nurse not getting a job d/t grades. if you pass nclex, that's all that matters. grades come into play when you want to go back to school- grad school. there are plenty of nurses practicing that were c students.

luvmy2angels · May 20, 2006

I think it depends on wether you are getting hired as a GN or GPN. Some states allow you to practice on a temporary permit before taking your boards as long as you are under supervision of a Registered nurse. If your state doesn't allow you to get a Temporary permit then I doubt they would look at your grades since you must pass boards and actually have your license to be able to work. In my state (PA) we are allowed to work with a temporary permit for one year. I was hired as a GPN at a hospital and they required my transcripts before they would even consider hiring me. Had I already had my LPN I doubt my grades would have mattered.

luv2shopp85 · May 21, 2006

I live in PA too but Im going to move to California after I graduate.

luvmy2angels · May 21, 2006

Here is the Cal. BON website, you may find some info here.

http://www.rn.ca.gov/

Momof3girls · May 22, 2006

I have never had anyone ask me about grades. I am thinking of moving to California...are jobs based on GPA there? Maybe I should rethink the move.

P_RN, ADN, RN · May 23, 2006

I never even had anyone ask where I went to school. All they wanted to see was my license. Bingo hired!

Tweety, BSN, RN · May 23, 2006

My employer did not, but I included on my resume "graduated with honor's, dean's list" and things like that.

:)

Daytonite, BSN, RN · May 23, 2006

i can speak to this since i worked closely with a nurse recruiter at one large teaching hospital when i was a nurse manager and a member of the new grad orientation committee. in general, the answer to your question is no.

however, the smarter recruiters who know their area know more about the area nursing schools than you can imagine. they keep contacts with the instructors and program directors at the schools as well as with managers and recruiters at other hospitals. many of your clinical instructors are/or were staff nurses at local hospitals and it is highly likely that one of the nurse recruiters you end up talking to knows one or two of your clinical instructors through a work situation. so, i have written about this a number of times and it is based on my experience working as a nurse manager hiring new grads and working with human resource people and nurse recruiters.

treat nursing school as if it were your job. i can't shout this loud enough. you are being evaluated and assessed in your performance every single day just as any employee at a job. your instructors and professors are compiling written data on each of their students. some of this data goes into a permanent file that is used in later years to help other nursing department instructors in later years who may not even know you provide information for job references for you. if you think i'm making this up, ask about this. despite strict rules on what can go into files, stray sticky notes get left in files all the time.

your first job references must come from your nursing school instructors. therefore, it is imperative that you have made a good impression. can your instructors say you were interested in nursing? did you whine and complain about all your assignments? were you always the last one in line to perform your return lab demonstrations? when volunteers were asked for, did you suddenly disappear? did you show eagerness to learn or need a whip to keep you going? did you accept mistakes you made like a man/woman, own up to them and demonstrate integrity in correcting and improving your practice? did you cut classes? were you a troublemaker? your instructors are going to be asked about your personality and character. make no mistake about the fact that employers are looking for people who are going to make good employees as well as deliver the goods as nurses and your grades don't show that. did you stumble through new procedures saying "glad that's over"? or, did you ask for more opportunities to practice and hone that new skill? no one wants a problem employee and i can tell you that as a nurse manager i want to try to elicit that potential information before i hire someone and have to deal with a bunch of behavior problems and bad attitude headaches.

it's not only what is written on a reference, but what is not written that gets considered. a potential employer of a professional person (and that's what an rn is) wants to see things about you like this: positive attitude, has a pleasant personality, communicates well, energetic, not afraid to step up and be responsible, respectful of others, able to work with minimal supervision, flexible and adapts to change readily, is a team player, has the ability to be an effective leader, can tolerate stress, has good problem solving skills, always eager to learn more and was a good learner in school. if some of those things are not on the paper i've got to go "hummm?"

the good ol' boy network still exists. even though you might have listed the two nursing instructors you wanted to give your references, our recruiter still picked up the phone and called the school to talk to the instructors she knew and whose opinions she had learned to trust in the past. no, it's not legal anymore, but who is going to tell and how are you going to prove it?

i cringe every time i see a post from a student either intimately involved in a hot issue or considering getting involved in one that is going on at the nursing school with the dean or the nursing instructors. employers get wind of that stuff too and more likely than not it's not good gossip that they hear. most employers aren't likely to hire people who come with baggage like that.

just remember that all your actions have consequences. the people in charge in the working world are more conservative than you might want to think. ultimately, those are the people you have to impress. so, c's are good. your instructors are right. just worry about passing your classes, passing the nclex and demonstrating that you have the right stuff to be an rn and work in the world as an rn.

TheCommuter, BSN, RN · May 24, 2006

Treat nursing school as if it were your job.

I didn't treat nursing school as my job, unfortunately. I slept in my car during clinical rotations, avoided socializing with my peers, and tied a patient's trach necktie so tightly that she became cyanotic. Fortunately, these events have not prevented me from finding employment.

To the original poster: no one has ever asked about my schooling or grades prior to hiring me, and I doubt they ever will. The nurse managers are all happy that I have a license.

renerian, BSN, RN · May 24, 2006

Never had anyone ask me that since I have been an RN, just my license.

renerian

oneLoneNurse · May 24, 2006

Nah, they are too busy looking for warm bodies. Any recruiter that does that is in my professional opinion: NUTS. Those who are not A students sometimes have an empathy and a personality that make them good nurses, not A students, BUT good nurses.

What do they call a student nurse who graduates at the bottom of his/her class ?

President Grant graduated the bottom of his class from Westpoint. They called him president Grant.