Is long term care that bad? and Long Term Care To Psych

[DA,RN]

Registered User

Join Date: Oct 2009

Posts: 2

I have two questions. The first is why is long term care considered scraping the bottom of the barrel as I have heard. After I passed my NCLEX in March of last year there were no jobs available anywhere in the New Orleans or surrounding areas for new RNs, so I finally made my way into a nursing home with 175 residents. I actually love the residents; I was promoted to weekend supervisor after 2 months because of my past background in management (I'm fifty so that is a long time.), but they work me to death for too little money. I think they are taking advantage of my inexperience in the profession. But what I want to know is why is it scraping the bottom of the barrel?

2nd question - I really wanted to go into psychiatric nursing. You would think there would be plenty of job opportunities around here because of hurricane Katrina, which was a nightmare and seems like the worst dream you could have that you can't wake up from. There aren't many job opportunities any longer because Charity Hospital now is still closed, because we haven't recovered yet, and that was the largest psych facility around. How difficult is it to go into psych from a nursing home? I tried applying and no one wants me without 2 years experience. I am dealing with dementia, and Alzheimer, and delusional patients every day.