Interviewed for a residency job: "you need more experience."

[chuym]

So, how does one get more experience for an entry level job?!

This is feeling so absurd and reminds me of Catch-22 more and more: You need acute care experience to get in to acute care, but you need acute care experience to get into acute care, but... (ad nauseam). Is anyone else running into this kind of thing? Anyone have any recommendations?

I am married and we are trying to have kids soon, but the only thing I can think of at this point is going out of state/country to get one year of experience, but with that the personal reference thing is less useful...

I guess I kind of expected to be able to, I don' know, be a nurse at some point in my nursing career. Currently, I am in LTC pushing pills and being a glorified Medication Technician that does dressings and documentation. The interviewers made it clear that this was not a helpful position.

[SummerGarden, BSN, MSN, RN]

ok, what you are going through every nurse who wants to switch into another specialty is going through. it does not matter how much experience he/she has even in acute care!!! if you do not have a set 1 year experience in x even though you have a good 10 years in y, then many facilities are not willing to hire you at this time. the reason being, they have choices and can save money hiring nurses with experience. therefore, yes, you need to consider expanding your job search out of the area to find your first acute care job. i did the same to find my first ed position and plan to move to find a better one in a level 1 or 2 facility. gl!