First Job As A Nurse! HELP!

[mountainjc]

The only job offer I have is from a very nice hospital. They have excellent benefits and the nurse manger is such a sweet heart. I have a few issues however, for one they offered me $18.10 an hour. Is this too low for a new grad nurse? Also they only have about 2 CNA's working a 33 bed step down unit, and the nurse manager was admittedly short staffed and was expecting to hire a lot of new grads in the coming months. It sounds to me like this is going to be a really difficult floor. Especially if they are having to train all of us new grads. Should I hold out for something more appealing to me, or am I being totally unrealistic and this is just how it is in the real world?

[IHeartPeds87]

I work in acute care on a med-surg floor. I have, one time in the past six months taken 11 patients. I will never do it again. NEVER. I have made a vow to myself that I will refuse anymore than 8 patients. In truth, the number should be six but I need to pay rent so my limit to live with myself is 8.

Anywhere that has told u that they have had 12 patients in acute care....please...run.

[SarahRN2013]

In my first job as a nurse, I worked on a progressive care unit where I almost always had 5 patients and the aids usually had 13 patients and often had 18 patients. I've also worked on a similar unit at a different facility where nurses usually have 4 patients, occasionally have 5 patients and rarely have 3 patients while the aids almost always have 7 patients and on a bad night have 9 patients. I'm sure that part of my dissatisfaction with the first experience was "new grad stress" related, but a large part of it was the higher nursing staff to patient ratios making the job more difficult. I loved the unit where our ratios were lower. I felt the patients got better care from nurses and aids.

As others have said, the hourly rate does seem low, but it's all regional for what is a good rate. There are some hospital to hospital differences in some cases, such as one hospital in my area only pays about $26/hr to contingents while nearly every other hospital pays around $38/hr for contingent positions. You'll have to find out what the going rate is in your area.

If you find out that the offer is the going rate, then I would see if your school (or people from cohorts that graduated before you) can give you and idea of how long it is taking people to land their first nursing job. My cohort pretty closely matched the one before mine with about 1/3 of students landing a job before graduation using connections from previous health care connections such as having worked as a nurse aid on a unit or from connections made during capstone preceptorship experiences. About 1/3 found jobs within 3-4 months of graduation and the most of the rest landed jobs within 6 months.

When I got a questionable offer just one month after graduation, I opted to not accept it knowing the Job Search info from the previous semester's class. I felt I could afford to wait up to 6 months. (I was working crappy part-time jobs to just barely cover expenses, but at the time, I didn't need to contribute to our mortgage payment or utilities, so I could afford the delay which may not be the case for you.) I accepted an offer from the higher ratio unit 4 months after graduation (without knowing that the aids' assignment was so high). It was an OK experience, and I didn't feel that my patients or license were in any danger, but it was a fairly stressful environment where many employees were unhappy (and the reason that I eventually left that unit).

Best of luck finding a good fit for your first job as a nurse. Welcome to the profession!

[Mscoleman78]

Oh wow, I live in Chicago and the starting rate in a hospital for an LPN is $18.00 and in a LTC or Nursing home is $22-$24/hr. That seems extremely low for a new grad RN. Good luck on your Job Search!!!!

[RainMom]

That starting wage may be normal for your area. My rural area starts at about $19-20/hr with one small hospital starting at $17ish.

Also, if you are in a more rural area, "step down" may not be a true step down. My facility renamed our medsurg unit to be "progressive care" or step down when actually many of the pts that go to our small ICU would be considered step down while extremely critical pts get transferred to larger facilities.

It's all relative.

[MichRN121]

Depending on your area, more than eight patients might not even have been legal.

[ManicRN911]

This honestly sounds pretty crazy to me with the ratio and low pay rate. I notice your post is from 3/14 so I was curious as to what your outcome was. One suggestion I still have is to request a day to shadow a nurse on the floor. This is not accepting the job but you follow a nurse for the day and just "watch". This gives you the opportunity to ask the working staff questions too!