7 months in and rather sad

[RaggedyRN]

I've taken a position on a cardiac stepdown unit. The problem is we see very few cardiac patients and many med-surge patients. I went into nursing after my mother had been hospitalized. My goal was to become an ICU nurse. I turned down a job at a magnet hospital in an ICU with a 6 month orientation to take this "cardiac" step down position. We don't even read the EKG strips...the docs don't trust the nurses to interpret them so we just stick them on the chart. The charge nurse lets us know if something is irregular. My problem is that I feel like I am a sucker who fell for the bait and switch. They promised a 12 week orientation on a stepdown floor and I got an 8 week orientation on a mostly med surg floor. I really am not happy. I sucked it up for six months and put in for a transfer to the MICU. The nursing coordinator just replied that they require 1 year experience before coming to the ICU. I know this isn't true because my friend from nursing school just transferred from another hospital to our MICU. I just keep thinking that they don't want to take me because they know my floor isn't really a stepdown floor. UGHHHH.. I really did not want to do the med surg thing and here I am in the thick of it. I dread going in to work and feel I am not learning what I need to know to get to the Unit. I was intimidated in nursing school by the whole telemetry thing so I thought I'd jump right in with both feet and start on a telemetry floor. Oh well...want to make God laugh tell him your plans ...right?

I debating on whether I should stick it out at this facility or move on. I feel this place has misrepresented themselves too many times and I am annoyed. Any suggestions, Advice, or sympathy greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

[TJRN]

I offer you my sympathy. It's so exciting to start your first job and to have the rug pulled out from under you is aweful. I graduated in December and started right into the MICU. It's scary and overwhelming but so exciting. I would recommend you speak with the HR representative and be honest about the situation, your feelings and how you believe it has been misrepresented. A friend of mine is in the midst of a similar situation and that is what she did, they worked with her and she will soon be transferred to the ER. If you follow the proper channels and are honest about how you feel and they still don't help you out then I say find another facility where you feel good about your new career. Hang in there.

[RaggedyRN]

Thanks for your reply. I just spoke with the recruiter for the ICU's and she backs up the nurse managers story...gee what a surprise. I'm going to give my friend a call and ask him what he put on his resume to get to the unit. Maybe he has some sort of experience that I wasn't aware of? I really just think they don't want to take nurses from my unit because they know my unit does not have the cardiac experience and they also know there has been a mass exodus frpom my floor. In just 7 short months I am quickly becoming one of the more experienced nurses. Pretty scary. I still don't know what I am going to do....not sure I want to work for someone who I know is lying to me about the 1 year experience thing. Any way...Thanks for listening,

[TJRN]

It'll work out. Somehow it always does one way or another. On the bright side you are still gaining valuable experience and skills.

[Daytonite, BSN, RN]

Sorry, duplicate post.

[Daytonite, BSN, RN]

I'm so sorry for what has happened to you. I was lied to about my starting salary at my first RN job. It was a substantial difference too. I quit after two weeks of anger, first, and then an agonizing decision. I had to pack my stuff and move back to where I had originally come from. You see, I had been recruited and relocated 100 miles from my home to work at this first job that ended up lying to me.

It happened again about 21 years later. I was hired to work on a stepdown unit (that's where my current experience at that time was) and after a couple of days of sitting on my butt in orientation classes discovered that I was reassigned to the surgical GYN oncology unit. No one bothered to tell me and there had been a month between the day I was hired and the day I started orientation. After 3 weeks of unsuccessfully tracking down the weasel of a manager who originally hired me and who made this major decision about my career with this hospital I was able to finally get the truth from the manager of the GYN unit and I quit on the spot.

They've pretty much done something similar to you. They didn't deliver the goods they promised. You can talk to them until you are blue in the face, but it's unlikely that you are going to get a position in any ICU. I'm willing to bet that part of the reason is because they can't afford to lose you from the stepdown unit. Stepdowns are notorious for high turnover rates. I'm reading your post and asking myself why you would want to keep working there after this has been done to you. These people have established themselves as unreliable and untrustworthy in my book. If I were you, I'd start applying for ICU or telemetry positions in other hospitals. You now know to ask who is diagnosing rhythm strips at these job interviews. I would have no problem telling prospective employers about promises not being delivered as your reason for leaving your current hospital and that there is no hope of getting the training you thought they were going to give you. The trick is to make it sound pitiful and not like sour grapes when you are in interviews. It's possible that the recruiters in other hospitals know that your hospital pulls this kind of crap on it's new grads. Something you could do is get one of the nicer, chattier heart docs aside and ask him what hospital he would recommend a new grad look for work in. Don't tell him it's for you so word doesn't get back to your manager. Tell him it's for a friend that's graduating in June. The docs know where the good nurses go.

[Sheri257]

Just goes to show, you gotta get everything in writing before you take a job.

:typing

[military spouse]

It may be possible that the one-year requirement is the minimum amount of time one must spend on the floor before requesting a transfer. It sounds as if your friend was an outside applicant. My last job required that we spend one-year wherever we were initially hired and after that year we could request a transfer anywhere in the hospital. Outside applicants could choose to interview for any available position, but once hired they had to spend a year before requesting a transfer to a different unit. Good luck!