New grad hired as charge nurse

[mdenton]

So a little background first. I graduated with a BSN in May of 2018 and passed the NCLEX-RN in late July. I also have recently moved the Philadelphia and it is near impossible to find a job as a new grad. I applied to probably 100 jobs and got very few responses. Nearly every job I applied to turned me down because I did not have a minimum of one year of RN experience. I finally got hired as an RN in a nursing home and the facility was really nice. Patients seemed happy, staff seemed happy and it seemed like a pretty good place to start my career. They offered me a position working 7p-7a and I accepted. I had two days of classroom orientation and then get 5 days of orientation with a preceptor on the floor. I was a little skeptical about the short orientation but thought that I could handle it. There are about 24-60 patients on each floor. I was under the impression that there were 2 RNs on every floor and the patient loads were split up that way. However I have come to realize that there is 1 RN and 1 LPN and a few CNAs. I worked my second orientation shift last night and my preceptor was asking me about charge nurse stuff and asking how I was feeling about it. That was when I realized they hired me as a charge nurse. Nobody even told me that that is what I was hired as. So far the patient load and meds/treatents is totally doable but I dont know if I can safely be responsible for my patients as well as responsible for what everyone else is doing on the floor. Just feeling really defeated at the moment because I have been job searching for months and FINALLY get an offer but I truly don't feel like the risk to my license is worth it. Maybe I am wrong but I do not think it is safe for a new grad to work as a charge nurse. Any thoughts/advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

[FolksBtrippin, BSN, RN]

I was charge as my first job, inpatient psych. It opened up doors for me.

You got this.

[CKPM2RN, ASN, EMT-P]

My first job as well, hit the ground running as Charge RN at a small LTC/SNF with 34-40 residents at any one time.

I ended up lasting 8 months before the exhaustion of trying to care for that many on my own and the risk to my license since I could not physically care for that many at one time as the residents continued to have more and more medical needs.

But the good side is that the experience and the skills I perfected there have opened doors for other jobs.

Of course there are those who will say, "Oh, long-term care? Do you want to be a real nurse?"