Need advice, please

If you already accepted the ICU job, then it might look bad to go to the ED interview. On the other hand, if you turn down the ICU position, you may not end up getting the ED position. The SAFEST thing to do is accept the ICU position (since you already did) and then transfer over to ER after a year or so.

If ED offers you a job, HR will be aware of both offers, and I don't know what they would think. It might not be such a big deal in the HR world, but I don't know. Any HR people have advice? Congrats on your offer!

ICU director already knows if HRIS doing their job. Personally, with 17 years of experience, I say keep the ICU position and get some experience. ER positions will come and go. Once you have the experience of caring for critical patients the safer and more confident you will be in your nursing care.

Call HR and ask for a written offer. Because until it is on paper and you have signed and accepted the offer, it is just a phone conversation.

I know the managers of both departments are friends. I just don't want to start my career in an environment where I may be considered as the nurse who "backed out" of an offer and went to the ER. I feel confident in my interview skills and feel I have a good chance with ER, but I did accept the offer over the phone for ICU. I'm stuck!! I'll call HR tomorrow and ask for their advice and take it from there because some of you are right..ICU can help me build skills that will make a more confident nurse in the ER in the future.

As an ER nurse, I think a year of ICU experience would be invaluable in many ERs, especially if you wind up in one of the many ERs that hold critical patients for hours or days. I'd take the ICU job, and in a year if you still want to go ER, transfer there and revel in being more confident in caring for patients who are waiting on an ICU bed over the long haul than most ER nurses.

I've worked in several ERs where it's not uncommon for the ED nurses to be assigned more ICU-admit patients than the actual ICU nurses upstairs are getting, as a matter of course.

Thank you so much for your input. The hospital is a Level 1 Trauma Center and maybe it will be too much to take in. I will probably take the ICU job

I would most definitely take the ICU position. There you will get the time and training you deserve and I promise will make you a better nurse for what ever you decide to do afterwards. This is where you start your foundation and you build everything else off of. I will say in my experience, many leave the ED to come to the ICU because they want to learn and know how to do things right. It's a different world in the ED. Additionally, I do think that it would cause an issue, I'm sure that the ICU manager has already submitted to HR your acceptance and they're preparing for the next step.

Thank you everyone! I decided to keep my ICU position and am happy I did because I, too, believe it will make me a better nurse in the end :)