Experience Required

US Hospitals are under pressure to increase BSN staff in order to meet national quality & safety recommendations. This also has an impact upon their financial bottom line, as insurers will be lest apt to include them in their networks if they do not meet the standard... they will also have more difficulty obtaining organizational liability insurance. So - it's pretty plain to see that acute care (hospital) jobs are rapidly changing to "BSN required". This has already happened in most larger & mid-sized cities. It's only a matter of time before it is a uniform standard.

Non-acute settings (anything other than hospitals) are not under the same pressure, so I'm sure there will still be a lot of opportunities for ADN nurses. However, these jobs tend to pay less and have less career advancement.

It's always a good idea to make sure you have an accurate impression of all of the benefits and challenges before making such a huge commitment. Best of luck to you in your career change.

I would not recommend volunteering as you would not be gaining any "real" experience. Consider other jobs besides hospitals. Also, apply at hospitals anyway. We prefer BSN with experience, but frankly, we cannot always get them. Surgery centers and MD offices are possible choices.

Thanks for the input, it has been very helpful. :)

Have you thought about getting your CNA certification and gaining some experience that way? It's not counted as RN experience, but it does help. I have extensive patient care experience and am about to graduate from a BSN program in NorCal, and I have one job offer and an interview coming up. I'm the first in my class with an offer, and it's in one of my dream units.

Schools won't necessarily help you line up job interviews, but I know our program reviews our resume and does mock interviews, though this isn't until the very end of the last semester (we still haven't done it yet), and most of us have started applying.

Internships during the summer are available through Chico State, and they place you in rural hospitals. It's not free, but people get really good experience out of it. I didn't do it, but a lot of my (younger) classmates did.

Volunteering won't help you gain patient care experience. What kind of nursing do you want to do? There can be alternative volunteer options that can get you experience with that population, perhaps, which can be helpful.

Just a heads up, you might want to change your screen name if that's your real name. Anonymity here is important! :)

How does volunteering not provide experience? I work as a volunteer RN at a free clinic and do everything an RN in a regular clinc would do---vitals, draw blood, perform EKGs-- plus I learn a lot from the nurse practitioners that I work with. It's the only way I could think of to get experience until I get hired. Plus in a recent interview, the manager interviewing me was very impressed that I had been doing this and related the patients that I see to the patients on her unit.

Plus in a recent interview, the manager interviewing me was very impressed that I had been doing this and related the patients that I see to the patients on her unit.

Did she hire you? I'm not trying to be mean here but I haven't heard from other new grads stuck in the first job hunt having much better success from volunteer work. I agree it's impressive and you should be commended.

Also, volunteer work in a non-licensed capacity is not the same as volunteer work as a licensed RN.

To the OP, good for you to know now what the job environment is for new grad RNs and if there is a difference between ADNs and BSNs (some areas area deplorable for both and some areas are hiring all). Don't count on your school to be up front. They have a vested interest in filling student seats, not necessarily in making sure they are filling a need.

If your area of the country is truly deplorable for hiring new grad RNs then reconsider moving if nursing is your passion. I know you said you can't move but consider this, do you want to continue to live there with an addition $10-20,000 in debt? If you are pursuing a career that has little market (at least in your area) why would you continue and worsen your financial standing. Unless you are independently wealthy and just want to acquire the knowledge.

Just saying. Spend some time reading through the new graduate/first year of licensure forums if you believe I'm being overly dramatic.

Now in my area of the country, new graduate jobs still exist, even in specialty areas, but it's much tougher and a lot of the new grads wind up in LTC for a while unless they know someone. In the last 3-4 years, I've know only a couple of new ADN grads hired into my unit and they both had solid contacts or it wouldn't have happened for them. This in a unit that used to hire 6-10 new grads (ADN and BSN) every 6 months.