Experienced RN changing specialties

[MissJessRN]

Hello all, I am an experienced RN with almost 2 years in hospital on Postpartum/Antepartum unit and float to L and D triage and PACU. I have applied to ICU and to L and D however the recruiters tell me that I do not have "full L and D experience" as in I havent been trained in the OR or labor rooms. A recruiter called me to interview and then the nurse manager told me that I "do not have full unit experience". Well we have antepartums on the postpartum floor and we also float to L and D and help as needed. And as for needing medsurg for ICU, well we do medsurg skills with the pregnant and post preg patients (except feeding tubes and chest tubes). I do not understand why it is an issue, new grads get hired into these units all the time and I would need a lot less orientation than a new grad. Most nursing skills are transferrable. Anyone have any advice? Thanks in advance.

[PacoUSA, BSN, RN]

Unfortunately, there seems to be a trend going on that I notice anyway. With an influx of new nurses into the marketplace, more and more of them are starting out in specialties and skipping past the traditional gateway area of med-surg for a year. It seems to be happening in most all specialties, like L&D, ED, ICU even. I dont know really why this is happening, why these specialties are preferring to hire new grads over experienced nurses that want to transition -- seems like we experienced nurses would have a smaller learning curve, no? It is very frustrating. I however am determined to keep trying to transition out of my specialty when I am ready, as I refuse to accept that I will be stuck in my present one for the rest of my career.

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[estrellaCR, BSN, RN]

I noticed this also...i wonder why it is like that. A nurse experience in another specialty will need less time to train into another area than a new grad that needs to start from the beginning. Im def not against hiring new grads but at least give experienced RNs a chance in another specialty also. The issue is too many nurses, not enough jobs. I would like for schools to have a cap on how many students they accept. A big private university (Nyu) in Manhattan graduates almost 300 new RNs PER SEMESTER...thats just one school. Imagine all the other colleges in the NYC area, how many total RNs looking for jobs NYC has per year some (the CUNYs) of which are more sensible and graduate just 80 RNs Per Year. Way too many RNs looking for jobs. The private schools should consider the job market before accepting everyone just so they can get $40K tuition per student per year.