This is aimed at all you fresh faced RN's to be, or possibly even fellow RNs up to 1 year post NCLEX who are still wondering what this whole nursing shortage legend came from.
The situation: You got your BSN, with a perfect 4.0 GPA.
You passed the NCLEX in 70 questions.
You have every certification they sell under your belt!
You sent out about a hundred billion resumes with pulitzer prize winning cover letters and now it's time to make some follow up calls and wait for the job offers to come rolling in!
Right??
Wrong!!!! In fact all of those things just qualify you to compete. None of them give you an edge. If you werent a strong student you never would have made it through nursing school in the first place!
Months fall off the calendar, and you're still working that Home Care or LTC job...or worse, but increasingly common, you're still working that non-nurse position you had while you were in school!!
What went wrong??
Well that is a warning of what to expect. Nursing Shortage does NOT mean, that they're all chomping at the bit to hire nurses, especially ones right out of school. The shortage means that the Powers that Be don't have (read: aren't willing to spend) the money they need to have a proper RN headcount on the floor.
Meanwhile, foreign educated nurses from Saipan, West Africa and the Philippines are being literally shipped over by the hundred to be paid exploitation wages and undercut any domestically educated graduate.
BUT THERE IS HOPE. I'll now give to you a short list of the things you need to do, while you're still in school...to ensure an easier job search. These are the things the few classmates of mine who already have jobs worth having, have done.
1) Clinical time is time to NETWORK.
When you're putting in your hours on the actual floor, keep in mind that you're not only trying to impress your instructor and prove your skills but remember the STAFF you're around is also eyeing the next crop of recruits looking for standouts.
These other nurses, especially the charge nurses, are all potentially powerfully useful references when you apply. They are also in a position to tell you about positions on the floor that will not be advertised. Work accordingly.
A little grease never hurts either. Shake everyone's hand, make sure everyone knows your name, and yes bring in donuts and coffee. Thank everyone at the end of the day for their help, even if they were completely involved on another unit all day. On your last day, send thank you notes to everyone. Real ones. And more donuts.
1b) Your clinical instructors are no less needing to be impressed. Like, don't just do your tasks and call it a day, you need to blow their minds with your enthusiasm and work ethic more than anything. WHY? because they make splendid references also if you apply for these things called "NURSING INTERNSHIPS" /Co-ops/Residencies etc. To apply for these train-to Full Time Job type situations, they want a letter of reference from your clinical instructors. And by letter of reference, I mean they want a GLOWING letter of reference. Not "You did all your work well ". They want "OH MY GOD EVERYTHING THEY DID WAS SO AMAZING ".
2) Get multi-state licensure ASAP. No matter where you live, you have zero reason to believe that you can count on a good job being in your city. Especially if you're in a city with a lot of nursing programs, like mine. These licenses by endorsement, take a long time, so as soon as you get your License, ...expand it. That afternoon! Accept the very likely possibility that you will end up re-locating to get that dream job, and probably to a small town you've never heard of .
That's all. Anyone else who has tips, feel free to add onto this thread!
Your first quoted article is 10 years old. Obviously things have changed greatly since the great recession of 2008. And add the fact that there have been many new nursing schools opened since then.
Your next link is from a recruiting agency trying to entice foreign graduates to pay for their services. If you read the international forums written by foreign grads trying to find jobs in America or Canada you'll see they are having no luck.
The third link is 4 years old at least and quotes statistics from 2007 and 2004.
And the rest of your links are not current either.
What we see here on AN is the facts written by foreign nurses trying to land jobs today. What they may post may not be considered as "evidence" in an article however their information is surely more accurate in today's world than an article written 10 years ago.
I don't know how these nurses are treated or what they are paid but I do know Trinity recently hired 85 nurses from the Phillipines and interviewed 200-300 RN's while they were there.
North Dakota is having a difficult time hiring nurses because few Americans want to live there and the cost of living is high due to a shortage of housing.
Actually..I do! I don't want to live there for the wonderful weather or affordable housing. I want to live there because the hospitals up there will actually hire new grads. There are quite a few grads willing to brave the cold just to get a chance to use their license. Check out the North Dakota board. I'm not sure how much it cost Trinity to fly in 85 nurses from the phillipines, provide them with housing, and to train them but I'm sure it cost a pretty penny. I think there are other ways they could have used that money to attract nurses in the U.S. I'm not saying this is a widespread practice among U.S. hospitals because I doubt that's true, but obviously it still does happen from time to time.
The section on IENs shows that NCLEX takers with foreign education spiked in 2007 at more than 22,000. Since then the figure dropped to around 6,000, probably due to the recession. It should be noted that passing NCLEX does not necessarily mean that the nurse has moved to the U.S. Many who pass still have to wait several years for their immigration documentation to get worked out.
The report does not discuss the reasons why and I have not read the actual study, but its findings are that there is an increase in safety concerns in employing a substantial number of IENs with staffing ratios of four patients per nurse or less. My guess would be it's a language issue that is causing the safety concerns. The study makes the recommendation for hospitals to employ no more 25% IENs among their staff in such instances. So this indicates that there are some places where foreign nurses are being recruited at higher rates. (Probably North Dakota is one such place.)
In this study 40% of IENs report having lower wages and worse benefits, so it would seem that there is some credence to the author's claim that they are being paid less. Another report from 2012 mentions that Filipino nurses are generally paid lower, at least when they first start out. (http://www.economics.neu.edu/activities/seminars/documents/cortespaper.pdf) Related to this is the existence of the Alliance for Ethical International Recruiting Practices (The Alliance for Ethical International Recruitment Practices) which was originally founded because of the significant level of unethical recruiting practices of nurses. In 2008, the Alliance published the "Voluntary Code of Ethical Conduct for the Recruitment of Foreign-Educated Nurses to the United States" which nurse recruiters can choose to follow. However, there are still many recruiters that do not follow the code, and nurses from other countries often are not aware of which recruiters they should be using.
Regardless of whether nurses are being ethically recruited it is a basic economic principle that when the labor supply increases, employment opportunities and wages decrease. Importing nurses was originally done because health care needs outpace the ability to produce new nurses. It's good for health care costs to import nurses, but not necessarily good for individual nurses, who, as a result, have more trouble finding jobs and lower wages when they do find them. This factor could have the effect of dissuading U.S. citizens from going into nursing and further exacerbate the country's ability to produce homegrown nurses, causing a greater need to import nurses. A secondary question is, what is the effect on the sending countries from which the U.S. imports nurses? It's too complex to get into here.
Specializes in HIV, Psych, GI, Hepatology, Research.
You can network in several areas ad even she you don't know it. I found my current job through someone in Facebook that I had never met but seen she was wearing scrubs. We struck up a conversation and now I work where she does and I've been here over two years. I graduate with my RN this summer and they have already offered me a position. (Currently a LPN)
By the way, we're all still waiting for you to state what your contrary position even is, or if you have any evidence beyond what you saw in the FN forum to back it up.
And by the way, you misrepresented the ages of all of my sources, either you deliberately miscounted , you didn't even look, or you don't know how to count....
Back to the original question- My advice is to get a job, any job in the hospital or institution where you think you want to work while you are in school. Many institutions will hire from within first, as they know the abilities of that person over the unknown of the stacks of faceless applications.
itsmejuli
2,188 Posts
Your first quoted article is 10 years old. Obviously things have changed greatly since the great recession of 2008. And add the fact that there have been many new nursing schools opened since then.
Your next link is from a recruiting agency trying to entice foreign graduates to pay for their services. If you read the international forums written by foreign grads trying to find jobs in America or Canada you'll see they are having no luck.
The third link is 4 years old at least and quotes statistics from 2007 and 2004.
And the rest of your links are not current either.
What we see here on AN is the facts written by foreign nurses trying to land jobs today. What they may post may not be considered as "evidence" in an article however their information is surely more accurate in today's world than an article written 10 years ago.