entry level RN jobs

[desro1986]

Hello. I'm currently in an associates degree nursing program. I;m about half way through and starting to think of where and what type of nursing I would like to get into. Many nurses I talk to say that starting off on a med surg floor unit is best. What are some other good places for entry level RN's to work? (in and out of the hospital)

[beth66335, BSN, RN]

I don't know of any other entry level areas except maybe a cardiac floor(not critical care)or Orthopedics. Med/Surg is the best because you can see such a variety and get a feel for what interests you most, you can see almost anything on a Med/Surg floor if you are there awhile. Ortho is good if you want to start real basic, it bores me but it can give you a chance to get more comfortable with your abilities.Anyone else?

[Daytonite, BSN, RN]

when i was a nurse manager i was on a new grad orientation committee at a large teaching hospital. ideally, you want to work on a unit that has a regular type of patient all the time so that you will be working where there is a pretty regular routine going on, same doctors, same types of patients. you get used to seeing the same medical diagnoses, same treatments and orders. that regular routine is kind of important. you want to work where there is a regular routine so you can focus on learning how to organize your work and practice and perfect procedures. it's hard to do that on a unit where there is constant chaos. when you first start working one of your biggest hurdles to learn is organizing and prioritizing. you talked about it in school, but you really get no experience with it in clinicals at all. it's very frustrating to get thrown into it on your first job. you also need to perform procedures so you get faster and proficient at them.

units that are fairly stable are medical and surgical ones, especially if they specialize in a particular area. my first hospital job was on a medical cardiac unit and then i moved to a neurosurgical unit. surgical gyn was also quite stable and interesting. the larger the hospital, the more likely they are to have specialized units and that is good. smaller hospitals tend to lump patients together onto general medical and surgical units--in places like that i'd opt for a surgical unit over a medical unit first because the surgical unit is going to only get surgical patients and the medical unit is going to get everything else. most places endeavor to keep surgical patients separated from medical patients for infection control purposes (they don't want the cooties from the medical patients getting into the incisions of the surgical patients).

my first rn job, however, was as a charge nurse in a nursing home. this is a very stressful job although it certainly is loaded with routine. little old people don't like change. depending on the place you could end up having to pass pills and do treatments on anywhere from 30 to 50 patients. that is in addition to supervising the cnas who are doing the basic patient care. i often get accused of being blunt and harsh--it, in part, came from learning supervision skills in the nursing homes or the cnas would have taken advantage of me and run the places.