So a good friend of mine who went to nursing school with me recently told me this. She is frustrated at her current job because she doesn't feel like she is learning anything and is reduced to task work like vital signs and phlebotomy. She said she left her last job (1st job out of nursing school) in ambulatory surgery hoping to find Cushier employment (no stress, no weekends, little responsibility) but now feels like she wants a challenge.
She has always commented on and applauded the fact that i have such a wide variety of skills and experience and can work in any specialty. I recently suggested she give acute care a try at least, even basic med-surg just to build her confidence and broaden her job opportunities. She said no way she will ever work in the hospital and that ever sine nursing school she didn't want to do bedside or deal with sick people. She even said she didn't want to go back to ambulatory surg and was thinking of L&D but when I explained how hectic and intense L&D could be she never mentioned wanting to do it again.
In ambulatory surg she mainly did plastic surgery type procedures but now she is hoping to get into the OR and move up. The problem is as we all know the job market is really tight, and I've tried to explain to her that merely having a few years of experience working here and there and a masters degree won't necessarily get you your dream job when you're going up against nurses with many years of varied and combined experience and education levels, employers are really being quite picky in what they want and want people with leadership skills and 5+ years experience for any masters level job which she admits she lacks. She has been looking to go back to amb surg which she didn't love but isn't finding many openings and was already not qualified enough for a job in her current line of work that someone she knew was going to set her with.
She's asked for advice but doesn't seem to want to consider anything that will require too much responsibility or stress and wants a simple 9-5 with good salary $80k+. She loves the idea of working in cath lab, L&D but does not immediately qualify. My suggestion to her was to get even a Few months of some type of acute care experience and then apply to what piques her interest so at least she's marketable. She young and still a relatively new nurse and there are nurses with 6mo-1 yr of experience who can function more independently. I don't know what other advice I can give, what do you guys think?
