For all pre-nursing students

kellyp374 · Mar 4, 2009

I think you are just experiencing issues because you live in an area where nurses are not a shortage yet. As for not being able to find a job...to all nursing students I suggest you look into preceptorships....it is like an internship. You can work in a hospital while in school and if you prove yourself, they will have a job waiting for you when you graduate. Also look to the rural communities...nurses are always needed in smaller towns. As with any career - new graduates have to expect that they will not get the job they want in the beginning. We all have to work our way into the job we want and climb the seniority ladder to get the Mon-Fri day jobs.

My advise to pre-nursing students.....don't get discouraged!!! If you want it bad enough - you will make it - just believe in yourself and do your research. :nurse:

TRR8021 · Mar 4, 2009

I hope that all new grads don't have to "pay dues" by working night shifts! By nights you mean overnight, right? lol I don't think I could handle that shift, but I'll work 1st, 2nd and weekends!! I'll even work every weekend just so I don't have to work 3rd shift and mess up my circadian rhythm. :wink2:

I'm still a nursing student and I anticipate having a hard time getting a job. I'm a second degree student and it took me about 5 months of job hunting to find a position with my 1st degree. Luckily I'm still working now so I can stay at this position until I find my first nursing job.

greeniebean · Mar 4, 2009

I also get frustrated when you have wanted and worked to get into nursing school and then you are up against all these people that are doing it for job security or the "money". I guess everyone thinks that medical fields are the way to go because we'll always have to have them but I want to be a nurse for different reasons!

farmlady · Mar 4, 2009

You forgot to mention the unmentionables, the barf, the poo, the incontinence (it took me a month I think to accept the reality of incontinence in adults when I was in my teens, working at my first SNF) the crankiness, the impossible patient loads. I just quit a job that had increased my load to 40, SNF situation. They do 150-300 per nurse in the jails. I did that too. Hated it. Assembly line. You HAVE to prepour meds for the next nurse or she will not get done. Then she has to check it against the MAR in the morning and hope she knows what the meds look like and pray that the pharmacy hasn't changed a brand (and thus the appearance). Yeah, illegal, but I have worked two facilities where this is the standard expectation. Their way to deal with understaffing or overloading, Pick one.

Then my personal favorites, the noncompliant diabetics. Worse, the hospital insists on feeding them all sorts of refined carbs so they are always over 300. You have coffee time in the dining room every day and donuts and then snacks between every meal and at bedtime. More carbs. If you raise a stink, they sit you down and tell you the patient has a right. This is thier home. They ignore me when I tell them "let me show you how to make healthy cookies that won't jack the blood sugars around", and they ignore me.

Talking about rights, did you know the patient has a right to fall? I have worked in at least ten facilities in two states and each and every one has had state inspectors tell them this. Two of my facilities were "no restraint" and they were a nightmare to work in. Falls constantly. Just that policy will increase your workload without increasing your patient load. Just the constant paperwork and extra to send them to the hospital if they break something. Can you imagine if the cops told us this with our seatbelts? Why don't we have a right to be ejected?

Oh!Oh Top that with the reality that Medicare has declared they will no longer pay for injuries related to falls. So the state dictates what they pay for but doesn't allow you to use personal protective equipment on the patient? In any other industry, that is what it is called. I'm sure it's breaking the facility I just left.

momology · Mar 4, 2009

New grad training is essential and costly for the hospitals. It is an internship. You will also end up following nurses who see you as competition. i don't understand why, other than to provide real information about actual New Grad programs in your area one would contradict this real and therefore helpful information. Shall the new grads show up in Seattle where they are laying off?Are Texas and Pennsylvania talking about new grad or experienced nursing positions. Is the wife of the psychologist seriously suggesting that one hire themselves out for private positions with no new grad training at all? He must have a lot of depressed patients as you have become enmeshed with positive thinking as an antidote for reality. That's called wishful thinking. If wishes were horses then beggars would ride.

Does one need to take the LVN nclex too? I was told that hospitals are cutting out LVNs since there is such a glut of RNs. Prospective students who are attracted by the former shortage and need to work for a living should factor in that the nursing professors want to keep their jobs so are not a reliable source of info on the job scene. thank you NickLaughs for telling it like it is without making it too depressing. remember he has the advantage of being male and young those are big pluses. Bilingual helps too.

dkemper · Mar 4, 2009

great post! :yeah:

and sobering post.

i earned my lpn 2 years ago. took almost 2 years off to get field experience as a nurse. this semester i have returned to school to finish my rn. there are still openings for rn's in my community of about 150,000. i periodically check the classifieds to get a feel of what the market is doing. lpn job only exist in nursing homes mostly.

in my previous career in information technology the companies cold not hire people with my skills for any price, that drove the market wage up. then the dot.com boom hit hard in 2001 and many of those jobs disappeared overnight. this happened in a matter of an year. the local market was flooded with extremely high skilled it staff out of work and willing to take anything. these high end skill sets were higher than my own so you can guess where that left me.

i returned to a goal i set a few years prior to become a nurse anesthetist. my interest in nurse anesthetist was not for the money, but rather for the adventure and my exposure to a friend working in that capacity. my 2 years off from school working as a nurse in a psych facility has got my interest. back to the reason for my reply.

one thing i learned in it, even when it was flying high, if you didn't have the experience you didn't get the best jobs. i had to be willing to take and work anything to get in the door unless you walked on water or had minimum of a bachelors degree, which neither applied to myself. my goal was to get in the door and prove myself then progress up the ladder. the progression was very rapid once i could put on my resume i did this and this and that, which was more valuable then the certifications i carried. sometimes it was like, "you can't get the job unless you got the experience, and you can't get the experience unless you have the job."

another thing i found out, no matter what level of schooling or certifications i had, without paid field experience all applicants were considered entry level! i taught some of the it courses and so many of the students had glassy eyes about the high salaries for such and such certifications and degrees. the were stunned to find out they needed experience before they would be considered for anything more than a tech position.

i anticipate the same in the nursing field. my license, grades, and knowledge will get me the interview but they probably will not hire me for any position requiring experience. honestly, i don't want to jump into any position requiring experience until i have some experience, a certain setup for failure. think about it, just because some one is highly athletic, runs all the time, wins many competitions, will he or she be able to compete in the iron man triathlon? no, the iron man will not let him or her compete for any price unless he qualifies. they know that person certainly would fail despite all their glowing athletism. the person needs to prove themselve.

i hope to enter into any full time entry level rn job when i graduate and move up from there, as i gain experience. i don't desire to set myself up for failure because i bit off more than my experience has allowed me to do. additionally, the failure would be a black mark on my resume. :redbeathe if i do the work in the trenches it won't take long to get where i want to be.

i vote, take it one step at a time, and i will get there soon. the saying goes, "how do you eat an elephant? one bite at a time."

iowa dave

JeanettePNP, MSN, RN, NP · Mar 5, 2009

Here is something I don't understand:

there are threads and threads talking about the impaction in nursing schools, that there is a limit to how many students a school can accept and train. So how can there suddenly be a glut of new RN's? There may be a glut of students trying to get IN to RN schools, but there haven't been scores of new programs opening overnight, to my knowledge.

Coffee Nurse, BSN, RN · Mar 5, 2009

The glut comes from the fact that there's a limit to how many jobs there are for new grads, as well. I know there are graduates from May '08 who are still looking for work; now they're competing with December/January grads, and soon enough there'll be the May '09 cohort out there. You can see how it backs up.

momology · Mar 5, 2009

The nursing school I went to doubled the size of their class the semester after mine. Multiply that by many other schools... People are flooding into nursing schools as other things fall apart and the press keeps playing up the supposed shortage and job security etc. The H1B visa allowance has been vastly increased for nurses no doubt fueled by lobbyists for the recruiters and immigration attorneys who take much of their wages. Not to mention employers who plan on paying them less. It's still better than what they made where they were.

I hear conflicting ideas on the LVN and get experience anywhere idea. But does anyone know if you need a separate LVN license, exam.I get differing opinions if one should go that route.Why would they ever hire you as a RN if they can get you at LVN wage that sort of thought

jamesgoal · Mar 5, 2009

LVN is that LPN. In my area its rare to higher a LPN in a hospital. Those that I have seen have a ton of experience, know someone, have been there for a while. Though they're kicking around the idea of cutting CNA and teaming up LPNs and RNs.

Guess it depends on where you are? In some states the LVN, LPN scope is limited.

TRR8021 · Mar 5, 2009

Yeah, there aren't many LPN/LVNs in my area either. I've heard of some in the nursing homes but very little if at all in the hospitals.

In response to another poster, I don't think people are going to nursing school in droves only because of the perceived security/money. I think you have to have some desire to work in health care because not everyone can handle blood, mucus, excrement, etc. I could be a lawyer and make six figures, but I have no desire or motivation to become one lol. And I'm sure that those people find that out about themselves after the first clinical and will drop out.

farmlady · Mar 5, 2009

The first job I had out of LVN school (that's LPN in any other state except TX), was with a registry. They took the chance on me and I managed to gain experience in ER, med-surge, SNF, rehab, psych, long term acute, child locked facility (psych), jail, prison, flu shot clinic, health fair, and locked Alzheimer's unit. I was surprised to learn I could hang blood in CA but not ATB's, and in NV I could hang ATB's but not blood. !! Odd. I also was interested to see that much of my scope depended on the policy of the hospital. One rehab only allows RN's to hang ATB's in NV, yet a long term acute allowed me to hepflush PICC lines and Central lines. There were many RN's, I assume I was "under" their licenses, but they never required me to do it under their direct supervision. I learned on my first job in a SNF that I can give inj morphine every 15 minutes SC to a dying pt. That was truly my first job and I was terrified, the Charge nurse did not know it was my first job, she must have thought I was an idiot. My LVN school had told us we would learn so much on the job and never bothered to show us how to work a modern electric IV pump (or any electric IV pump at all) or how to set up those old blue plastic injection holders, I was LOST! A lot of places still have those. I remember seeing them in the 80's when I was an aide.

I could give morphine SC but an RN had to do it as a push. I was trained by a back east LPN who set up her MS in the IV pump and walked away. She did this time and again and I assumed it was legal. So she found a loophole where she could give a push without it legally being a push. I never had that much courage so it would take me forever to wait around on an RN to not be busy to do my pushes.

One of the reasons I want my RN is so I don't have to wait around on an RN to do easy duties.