Home Health to Acute Care Settings

[nsoler, ADN, RN]

Hi everyone, so I'm graduating in May 2021. I have received two job offers so far. One is from my local hospital for their nurse residency program. It is full time, I'm not sure of the hours and schedule yet, but I'm going to assume its 3-12 hour shifts. The pay is about 52,000/year. The hospital will let me work on a number of different med-surg units and see which one I work well with. 

My other job offer is with a home health agency that I worked for, for about 7 years. It is a really small office and I know everyone that works there including the aides. All the nurses are nice and welcoming and are encouraging me to take the job. But its M-F with an on-call weekend once a month and one night during the week. I'm not sure what the offer is going to be on pay yet, but I'm afraid if I take this, it will be because I'm too afraid to step out of my comfort zone. 

So my question is this.... If I take the home care position and work there for say, a few years. If I decide I don't like it, what is everyone's experience with getting into a hospital setting after being a home health nurse first? Is it harder to get in after working home health? Should I take the hospital position? If I pass up this home care job, it will not be an option as this office has nurses that work there for eons and retire from there. So I would be passing this job up for good. I would love to work both jobs, but that's just not possible. Any advice?

 

Thank you ?

[caliotter3]

In general, home care jobs are "easier" to get than hospital jobs, especially right out of the block.  In general, it is a given that the hospital job is going to be better for your career as far as learning various aspects of the job and building your nursing resume.  Home health is generally considered to be limiting.  If I had to advise you, I would say to take the hospital job as being more advantageous to your overall career.

[crystalbenz]

If you truly love home health. I’d stick with that. Hospital med surg does make you more marketable in the future and it’s good experience but it really depends on what you enjoy. You could probably get a Med surg job after, there’s a person at my hospital that just got hired from being in HH.