Job advice - HELP!

[Nevada_RN]

Fellow nurses, I am in need of some guidance with my particular situation. I have been an acute care/ inpatient nurse for a little over two years. A few months in med/ surg and two years in medical/ oncology. I currently live in N. Nevada.

I have a job interview in the Sacramento area for a small (3 chairs) outpatient chemotherapy infusion center affiliated with one of the major hospitals in the area. (I would be mixing chemo, assessing patients during infusion, and following up with patients afterward.) I am excited for the opportunity, but am reticent to take the job if it is offered to me because I am afraid that I will ruin my chances to get back into the inpatient hospital setting. I really don't want to lose my nursing skills.

My questions are these (bear with me, please... I am anxious): Should I take the job given that fact that California nursing jobs are hard to come by and plan on transferring to an inpatient job in a year or so? Will going to the outpatient setting be a step in the wrong direction? Do I wait for an inpatient job to be offered to me? I love my current job, but want to get to CA as my fiance lives there.

Also, my eventual plan is to get my MSN and become a NP or teach.

Any advice would be much appreciated. Thank you!

[jadelpn, LPN, EMT-B]

If you take the outpatient job, you would have the opportunity to get certified in oncology nursing. Which is a good thing. You could take a per diem acute care nursing job, just to keep up your skill set. When you decide to go forward with your NP, it could be for oncology as well.

If you take the job and decide it is not for you, then you could ask for more hours at your per diem, and reassess.

Best wishes--

[RunBabyRN]

Is the job full time? Would you be called off for low census? I work in an outpatient clinic, and I have to say, I love the regular hours, not getting called off, not working a ton of unplanned OT, having holidays off, etc.

Would it be close to your fiance? Do you plan to stay in the area? FYI- Sac has some of the highest RN pay in the nation.

I agree about getting a PRN inpatient position as soon as you can. One thing that's nice in one of these smaller places is that you do EVERYTHING. There isn't a mixing nurse, an infusion nurse, a nurse for this, a nurse for that. You are everything. So you get a broad scope, which means a lot of opportunities to learn.