Lvn to BSN- now do I go to the hospital?

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So after 10 years of being an Lvn and working mostly in hospice,  I finally got my RN license.  I've never been able to work in the hospital because the pay in my area for an Lvn is terrible in the hospital.  Everyone keeps telling me it is horrible,  but I really want to get the hospital experience.  It would also be nice to build my skills back up.  Am I making a mistake going to work in the hospital? Especially with Covid?

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This is all such an individual thing; it really depends on your personal motivations and goals.

I personally have made choices to put myself in a position to not work in a hospital again if I can help it. But that's me, my personality, my life experiences and my goals. Not yours! ? So this really is about you.

Really think through the whys. Why is working in a hospital important to you? If it's because it will make you feel like a "real nurse" that is the one thinking I would discourage.  You are a real nurse wherever you are using your professional knowledge and skills for others' benefit.

Hospitals are rough completely unrelated to covid. But there are plenty of good reasons people want to work in one. The main thing is to know your motivations and then go in with a plan and your eyes wide open. ??

 

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Thanks for your response.  I guess I'm just nervous because I hear so many horror stories.  But I'm tired of being on-call.  Even if I'm not on-call, I still get calls.  I'm tired of driving all day.  We moved to a big city, and it's a lot different.  I got an offer for an oncology unit, so I'm going to try it out.  The nurses on the unit seemed really awesome and nice.  Everyone has just been really negative.  They all say "I give you 3 months".  I'm hoping I find my happy place despite my hospice nurses telling me different. 

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3 hours ago, JKL33 said:

I personally have made choices to put myself in a position to not work in a hospital again if I can help it. But that's me, my personality, my life experiences and my goals. Not yours! ? So this really is about you.

Really think through the whys. Why is working in a hospital important to you? If it's because it will make you feel like a "real nurse" that is the one thinking I would discourage.  You are a real nurse wherever you are using your professional knowledge and skills for others' benefit.

 

I'm glad you say this, because MANY people believe that we don't have a "real" nurse job if it's not in the hospital. 

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3 hours ago, TexNurse6138 said:

I got an offer for an oncology unit, so I'm going to try it out. 

Congratulations! That was my new grad job which I did for a respectable number of years and I loved it. While I can't speak for individual hospital corporations or different Onc units across the country, my experience was that Onc nurses are awesome and Oncology nursing gets right to the heart of (what people traditionally think of as) nursing. It is intellectually stimulating as well as allowing you to use soft nursing skills. It is a specialty that has long been interested in professional nursing excellence and in producing their own nursing research, etc.

I hope you do very well there. Don't let naysayers distract you. Plan right now to stick with it unless it is seriously not a good place.

Best of luck!

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8 minutes ago, Hopeful RN said:

I'm glad you say this, because MANY people believe that we don't have a "real" nurse job if it's not in the hospital. 

Remember that whether they mean to or not, those who talk that way are saying something about themselves -- not the person whose job they are belittling. They say these things, or hold these beliefs, in order to feel good enough about themselves as a person. They try to elevate themselves above their neighbor in their own mind, or put others down so that they can feel good about themselves.

Pay no mind to it! ??

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3 minutes ago, JKL33 said:

Remember that whether they mean to or not, those who talk that way are saying something about themselves -- not the person whose job they are belittling. They say these things, or hold these beliefs, in order to feel good enough about themselves as a person. They try to elevate themselves above their neighbor in their own mind, or put others down so that they can feel good about themselves.

Pay no mind to it! ??

Well said! ? I love that and will definitely remember that!

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