Twin Cities hospitals for new grad?

Jenny P · Jul 14, 2001

Bassbird, I work at ANW- "the hospital that can't count right", and we have a great new-grad orientation program as far as I can tell. I work in CV-ICU; and we have a 6-8 week orientation for nurses into our unit according to experience and the orientees' learning ability. The orientation puts the nurse at a basic ICU skills level, then after you've been here a year or so, you get oriented to level 2 and are oriented to open heart recovery. Level 3 comes another year or so down the line when you're oriented to VAD's, charge nurse duties, CRRT, transplants, etc.

Up until 2 years ago, we never hired new grads into our unit, but the nursing shortage has even hit us.

Good luck in your job search; and in your schooling. Study hard; we need all of you new nurses out here in the real world!

bassbird · Jul 14, 2001

Hi Jenny!

I was hoping you would reply to my post. I've read many of your posts and followed the strike closely. There was an ad in the paper last week about Abbott's new grad program. They made it sound interesting but it was an ad...

From what I have heard it is best to get some med-surg experience before jumping into ICU (an area I am definitely interested in). Do you think this is wise? I really want to be a competent nurse, and I know most of my "education" will come after I graduate.

Have things improved at all since the new contract? I do have a friend at FVR who says many nurses are giving their notice.

Thanks for your advice, I will study hard! I look forward to joining the real world of nursing :)

Jenny P · Jul 14, 2001

I think the things that makes a new grad program successful are the preceptors, the learning experiences, and the new grads' ability to ask questions and their eagerness to learn. Through the years, I have felt that new grads shouldn't start in ICU because the learning experience is so intense and to try to get your basics down at the same time you are trying to learn about the whole critical care scene can be too much at once.

That is why my unit didn't hire new grads; many were overwhelmed by the whole experience and ended up leaving nursing (in other ICUs I'd worked in). However, right now we have several nurses who started out in our unit as new grads and some of them are excellent critical care nurses. I'm amazed by a couple of them that just could pick up information as fast as it was given to them!

As far as the strike business, there are some nurses who are still upset by the whole mess at ANW and are demanding that "someone at MNA should be fired". They formed a group to change MNA; I found that a lot of these are people who just couldn't be involved with their professional association before; maybe this will cause them to take an interest in what is going on at the state and national levels.

After a strike, it is fairly common that nurses will leave the hospital that they went on strike against: they have lost faith and trust in that facility, so they leave (and hopefully find a better place to work). It is hard to adjust, and I feel that FVR forced those nurses to go on strike with the paltry offer they gave the nurses.