excelsior paramedic to rn, no experience :).

the question i'd have is what my employment prospects would be as a newly minted medic and nurse with no experience? my state (florida) doesn't recognize excelsior unless you're an lpn first. i'm intending to head up to the northeast and work for a couple of years. i'm wondering how the excelsior degree without experience will be percieved by employers.

i'd greatly appreciate any input.

The reports on employment of Excelsior grads are mixed. A lot of people will tell you they didn't have any trouble finding jobs, but others do. A lot of it can depend on what kind of experience the EC grad has. If they're an LPN who already works there, that's one thing versus others who may have much less experience and no relationship with the hospital.

To complicate the situation futher, two states: California and Kansas have disallowed the program in the past year. In California this was, at least in part, due to complaints from employers. There have been other threads posted from people in Colorado who claimed there were employment problems for some Excelsior grads there. And, other states are supposedly re-evaluating the EC program, but there's nothing firm on that.

The best thing to do is call employers in the area where you plan to live and ask them yourself. And, of course, you'd want to call the state board and make sure they still accept EC. You might want to also ask the board if they're looking at the EC program since, in Kansas, it appears they may have disallowed the program retroactively even for people who had already graduated. So it can be tricky.

From what I've heard, LPNs probably have little or no trouble versus others in the EC program who may have less experience. But, of course, it all depends on where you want to work and what those employers' policies are.