If several nurses warned you against working on a particular unit at a hospital....

[CheckThePoo]

I currently already work at the hospital but am still a student. I'll be graduating in May. I've been warned by several nurses (on different units) to NOT go to work at this particular hospital on their med-surg unit. They said that the unit is awful - the nurses don't support each other, and management is bad.

My concern is that when internship time comes around that med-surg may be the ONLY option. Considering that there's a hiring freeze in my area AND very strong competition for very few jobs for grads, I'm nervous to decide which is the lesser evil.

Should I pay attention to the red flags and take their advice and not take a med-surg position? They all have said the same things about the unit - including one of their own med-surg nurses (she ultimately found a new job and left). Or should "beggars not be choosers" and should I just suck it up and take whatever I can get?

Advice?

[Blackcat99]

Take whatever you can get. Absolutely. Any job is better than no job at all. Good luck.

[llg, PhD, RN]

While it is wise to be looking ahead ... it's unwise to get too worked up about a troublesome possibility that hasn't happened yet. So try to stay cool about it. What you fear might not even happen -- and a lot can change between now and when it would make any difference in your actual real life. Apply for the internship you want and see what happens. Also investigate other job opportunites and apply as appropriate.

If your only option seems to be the unit that you have been warned about ... I would take it when the time comes and make the best of it. Since you are working for that hospital now (and presumably have a good reputation there), then you should be able to transfer out of that bad unit eventually should it turn out to be as bad as you fear. You should be able to live with it for a few months while you get some experience that would interest a better unit, particularly considering your current employment there.

[RadBSN]

Don't worry about it yet, just apply to everything that you can and see how the cards fall. I was concerned that I might end up on a crappy, unsafe floor because I was so worried about the job market. I was so worried and stressed out about getting a job that I really think I didn't enjoy my last semester as much as I could have!

If it turns out that's your only offer when you graduate then you have to decide if you want to be on a floor that's awful and suck it up for a year until you can transfer or if you want to wait it out until you find a less miserable position. I wouldn't take a job where I felt like I would be putting my license at risk by practicing unsafely. I am also lucky enough that my partner was willing to support me until I found a good job so that I didn't have to worry about taking something that would have made me miserable.