New Grads and Career Change Prospects

[Flying ICU RN]

New to the forum however, not new to the business.

I'd like to address two issues that I am seeing repeated with some degree of urgency (New Grad Job Search and Career Change). My apologies for not being able to address a number of individual posts directly as there are simply too many.

New Grads:

What you are seeing now (in some areas of the country) is a temporary phenomenon, I promise you. No, you did not make a mistake getting into Nursing, the payoff is coming. The key, is that once you have in fact become employable (i.e experience) is to maintain that employability by remaining a clinical asset, this means bedside nursing. Not just any bedside nursing, but where the jobs are, staff positions in ICU, Med-Surg, LTC, Home Care etc. Here's a link to government data that may help you feel a bit more secure about your choice of career http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos083.htm#outlook

Career Change Prospects:

Life, really does boil down to timing and choices made.

Little things in life are more humbling than the inability to find a relevant income producing job in your chosen profession. Particularly after a significant investment in time and emotional capital, let alone funds. I myself came to work one day to find the gates locked (at a major airline) and a riot ensuing outside. When a licensed Commercial Pilot and Flight Instructor finds himself delivering PIZZA to makes ends meet when the unemployment insurance has run out, it's time to take a whole new look at the world.

19 years later, my wife and I have a beautiful daughter and two homes, (She's a nurse and a career change refugee as well, guess where we met?).

So the things that bother most people in this business, is good news to me.

I hope both of you, the New Grad as well as the Career Change Prospect, hear me well and can benefit.

[traumaRUs, MSN, APRN]

I do agree with you to a certain extent. However, I think the gov't is way too positive-minded.

The economy in my neck of the woods stinks: unemployment in double digits, no jobs for new grads, limited jobs for very experienced nurses, frozen pay, no employer contributions to the 401k plans (which btw have lost >50% of their value over the past 2 years), nurses in my age group (50's) planning to NEVER retire - just cont to reinvent ourselves.

[Flying ICU RN]

The economy in my neck of the woods stinks: unemployment in double digits, no jobs for new grads, limited jobs for very experienced nurses, frozen pay, no employer contributions to the 401k plans (which btw have lost >50% of their value over the past 2 years), nurses in my age group (50's) planning to NEVER retire - just cont to reinvent ourselves.

I'd be willing to bet that in "your neck of the woods" as in mine, your groceries are now being bagged by a senior citizen. (My 1st job as a teen).

That's the scary barometer for us all as to what we can now expect in retirement!

[Saysfaa]

In my neck of the woods, shoppers bag their own groceries because stores can't afford to pay the inflated minimum wage. Only one teen (or retiree) driving the Chinese made mechanized cart pusher instead of ten to fifteen teens working some pizza off pushing carts in as they earned a way to put something in the "previous job history" slots of their future resumes.