Externships in Southern Cali?

[zazenchic]

Hi I am currently getting my associates in Georgia. I am planning on moving to cali after I graduate. I will be done with my first year in the spring and want to do an externship in Cali for the summer so I can see the area and live out there vs. just moving there after I graduate in 2 years with no clue about California, the hospitals, and just the area where I want to live.

Anyways my question is do you know of any hospitals that offer externships for assoc. RN students? I would prefer to live somewhere around Long Beach -Santa Monica area. i don't know much about California so sorry if thats a weird way of putting it. Basically that area!

p.s if not externships what would be a job I could do in Cali this summer to get expierence and still be able to learn?

Thanks for your time!

-Lisa Bond

It would be best to email me!

[email protected]

[Sheri257]

If you're talking about real externships where you actually do RN duties as a nursing student ... the only way to legally do that (as far as I know) is to be enrolled in a California nursing program that has externships set up with certain local hospitals. The BRN has many rules that have to followed, including registering for a cooperative education course while you're an extern.

If you don't follow those rules, you can get in trouble with the board. One student didn't register with co-op while they were externing, the board found out about it and that student couldn't take the NCLEX.

As far as I know, you can only work as an aide or tech ... something where you wouldn't do RN duties. Nevertheless, you can find out a hellava lot about hospitals that way and whether certain facilities are good places to work ... or not.

:typing

[BeccaznRN, RN]

UCLA offers a summer externship, but you have to be a senior BSN student to qualify.

I go to school in St. Louis but I have spent my last two summers in California (SO serves in the military out there). I lucked out by being eligible for the UCLA externship (and accepted!) this past summer, but the summer of '05 I only had one semester of nursing school under my belt and wasn't able to get any temporary jobs r/t nursing. I ended up just doing office work through a temp agency.