First year Nursing Student

Chelle79 · Oct 30, 2009

Hi Toyia......Not sure how helpful I will be for you, but give it a try. By reading your post I was somewhat confused. There are a number of things and places you can work however, generally speaking you would probably be working in a hospital or perhaps even a doctors office. When you talk about working from the home...are you referring to being a midwife?? I have never heard of Maternity Nurses being on 24 hour call before but I could be wrong. As a midwife, I can see that happening.

I too, took a strong liking to the maternity ward as a nursing student and had high hopes of falling into a job straight from school. However, it is not the way things usually go. Most times they want you to have some sort of experience already or some time spent on a med-surg floor which is where I ended up. You will get LOTS of experience by being a med-surg nurse first and than going into a field of specialty.

I hope that it helps somewhat. I wish you the best of luck with school and your future.

ToyiaC.Jack · Oct 30, 2009

Thank-you so much!!! :)

panamishe · Oct 31, 2009

so there is a difference between a hospital staff nurse, a nurse in a doctor's office, and a home health nurse. to be a hospital maternity nurse, you have to get into a maternity externship program at a hospital. your best bet would be to apply to a university affiliated, aka teaching, hospital. you could also work for a doctor's office but you wouldnt be in the hospital during the birth or doing newborn care...you would be doing mostly follow-up well baby care in the office, as well as parent education. Usually, doctor's offices like the nurses to have a year or more of hospital experience. Lastly, there is home health nursing. These are the nurses that actually make house visits for either follow-up well baby care, or follow-up care on a high-risk birth baby. home health nurses work for home health agencies and consulting doctors. also, to be a home health nurse you need at least one year of clinical experience.

As Chelle79 said, many times you might not be able to get a maternity new grad job as soon as you graduate. the key is to get a job on any floor in the hospital that is hiring and accepting new grads...DON'T SIGN A CONTRACT!...and then get to know the nurse manager on the maternity floor. many hospitals will allow a new employee to transfer to another unit after six months of employment as long as it does not violate a contract signed with the original unit. anyways, i hope this helped and good luck!