New grad looking for peds opportunities offered a school nurse job

[Star2011]

I'm a new grad who has been looking for a job in acute care for the last few months....not much is panning out except for the fact that I was offered a job as a school nurse. Anyone been in this situation before or know anyone who took this route in hopes of landing a job in a hospital/clinic at some point? Just curious if it would be good experience or if I should keep holding out and hope for the best?!

[Star2011]

Thank you for sharing your thoughts! It makes me hopeful that it can work out with some hard work on my end. In the meantime, I just got offered a job at a SNF. Does anyone have any thoughts on what would be better career-wise for me? School nurse vs. SNF?

[conscientiousnurse]

I started out in a SNF and did some school nursing later in my career. I think both jobs are quite challenging, but in different ways. I found the SNF was good experience, and I learned a lot, having the charge nurse to consult with as needed and learning from the shift reports. However, it is important to make sure you can handle the workload. Better to not have to pass meds to more than 25-30 patients unless you are faster than average or unless it's night shift. There are a lot more types of treatments and meds you will do in an SNF that you would not do as a school nurse, so it's a little closer to acute care than school nursing is. School nursing might be good if you don't feel comfortable with the workload at an SNF and if you have excellent support and orientation in the school. But I think it would be harder to give good, safe care as a school nurse than in an SNF, since you usually are the only nurse in the building. It requires a great deal of independence and excellent judgement. When in doubt in case of an urgent situation, better to call 911 for them to assess whether the person needs hospitalization (although I only ended up doing that once during my year as a school nurse).