New Grad in ICU

[wmarty8008]

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,

[PMFB-RN, RN]

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 

[RickyRescueRN, BSN, RN]

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 .