New Grad in ICU

wmarty8008 said:

Hi All, 

Currently, I am in nursing school and going into my senior year. I want to work in the ICU post graduation and am looking at several different Nurse Residency Programs in my area. At the moment, I have +400 nurse internship hours in a 6 bed ICU and will have more in a larger ICU this coming Summer. Bedsides the hours of experience, student nurse association leadership, and other involvement/research, what else must I do make myself look more appealing and prove that I can handle an ICU as a new graduate? 

Thanks,

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What they mostly care about is a solid track record to showing up to work when you are supposed to. Emphasize your reliability in your past work experience 

Many of the larger university hospitals have New grad residencies which last 10month to a year. I would recommend seeing if you can arrange a job shadow at the place you would like to work after you graduate. It definitely helps that you have done clinicals in some ICUs. That gives you huge foot up as you are a known entity to them. It also helps if you know RNs working in an ICU you'd like to work in. I had a student nurse colleague I was mentoring a few years ago and I actually wrote an email to a friend who was the ICU manager with this student nurse's resume and gave him a personal recommendation and the student was hired into that very ICU. Networking and who you know is definitely a reality .

Do you have a list of the places you would like to apply? If so, start looking at their requirements. I only wanted to work in ICU at trauma level 1 or 2 and I was willing to travel anywhere for it. During my last year of nursing school, I researched all the ICU new grad residencies at hospitals.that met my criteria and made notes of their requirements and especially deadlines. For any questions, I contacted the recruiter or department in charge. I even started getting thing ready (portfolio) and applying if the start date was after but the deadline was before my NCLEX. Some programs allow you to apply before taking the NCLEX and your job offer will be contingent on passing.

I applied for 20 programs at major hospitals that I thought would give me good ICU foundations. so I recommend to read how the residency program is run, and if it matches your desired criteria. During my time, it was very competitive. To stand out, I did a 10 week ICU externship for the hospital where I worked during nursing schools and where I did my clinicals. Yet I was declined a job there when I applied for their ICU residency program. After many rejections, I had only 3 interviews out of the 20s applications sent,  2 job offers (one interview was for PCU and ICU but I got offered PCU so I declined). The only other job offer I received was a blessing in disguise, at my desire ICU which is the MICU. I was declined for Mayo, Duke, UCLA etc..and there was no way I would have been accepted at Hopkins with just an ADN. And yet Hopkins was the only one who offered me a job. Hopkins has its own nursing school with MSN prepared nurses. The position required 120 hours of ICU externship. I only had 100 hours but I still applied. So  my advice here, apply to places where you meet most of the criteria but not all, it won't hurt. I came to the interview with a nice portfolio. I flew from Colorado to Baltimore for the interview and the manager called me right after the interview to offer me the job as I was on the plane. He said that he hired me because I came in prepared, and that my extensive community work stood out. In addition to the ICU externship, I also got my ACLS , became a certified phlebotomist during nursing school so that my resume already has skills the ICU needed when I came in as a new grad. But as you can see, I also didn't have a lot of interviews. I may have been overtly ambitious. I am at Mayo now, knowing what I know now, I am glad I didn't go to Mayo as a new grad because Mayo nurses have many resources and I would have missed out on getting the crucial ICU nursing skills that would have served me during my travel nursing jobs.

If you just want a job, then don't mind what I said ? but if you want to go where you'll have great ICU foundations, make sure to research the program. Hope this helps! Good luck!