How would a preceptorship in a different specialty affect me?

[kmbxo, BSN, RN]

Hi everyone,

I'm currently in my last semester of RN BSN school, and I want to work in women's health (OB, antepartum, L&D). My school in southern California is having the hardest time finding placement for everyone because of COVID restrictions. It's a lot easier if you personally know a nurse but I'm from northern California so my networking is limited. 

With that, I got offered a preceptorship at the VA in Case Management, which is totally not the field I want to be in at all. How would this affect me when applying for a job in Women's Health since I didn't specialize in it for my final semester? I noticed a lot of job applications require your preceptorship to be in that specialty if you're a new grad. I'm conflicted because if I take the Case Management preceptor I will 100% graduate on time but if I turn it down I risk waiting longer for a nurse preceptor in my specialty and it could lengthen my graduation date. 

[chare]

And if you turn this down and aren't offered a preceptorship in women's health next semester?

[kmbxo, BSN, RN]

5 minutes ago, chare said:

And if you turn this down and aren't offered a preceptorship in women's health next semester?

That would probably be a very slim chance, because worst case my cohort finishes and I take one of their nurses as a preceptor over Winter break and finish my hours. 

[JKL33]

16 hours ago, kmbxo said:

I noticed a lot of job applications require your preceptorship to be in that specialty if you're a new grad.

That seems so nuts. Now employers expect that people will be able to specialize while receiving a basic baccalaureate degree? What next!

[bitter_betsy, BSN]

I'm not sure about there, but where I am the only way to get into women's specialties is through residency programs or to have been a tech on the floor.  Very rarely do they hire new grads out of the gate into L&D or the NICU.  My residency program has 1 L&D person out of 50+ of us, 11 ED, 5 ICU.  In the ED and ICU - every single one of us was a tech first (4 of the ICU techs and 5 of the ER techs were in their same location as they are working now, the rest of us came from other hospitals).  On the flip side of that - I thought that I wanted to do PEDS ER.  My final clinical rotation was in the Peds ER and I absolutely hated it.  Made me realize I didn't want to do asthma and snotty noses all day and I really didn't like biting my tongue on the various levels of parenting styles.  Somehow I also managed not to see a peds trauma or peds death, so I'm not sure how that would have really affected me either.