So long story short, here's my career in a few sentences:
1) Went to accelerated program with no previous hospital experience. Not fun, but I did well. We had minimal clinical experience. NCLEX on the first try, no problem.
2) No jobs even to apply to when I graduated. I wanted an ED new-grad program, but I ended up getting a med-surg job at a small hospital out of state. I was very green when I started, but I did pretty well there.
3) 10 months into job #1, an ED job opened up at a really tough hospital back in my home state (poor hospital, lots of drugs, rough patients, crazy experience). I did not get a great orientation and ended up getting pushed out pretty green. It was a really tough place to work, but I loved working in the ED. I always felt like I was catching up and I was working on a basic level, but I also trusted myself enough to know when I needed to ask for help, when I was over my head. Never really had a problem there. One of the charge nurses used to ride me pretty hard, said I was inexperienced, which I was.
4) pretty much exactly a year after that, I got offered a job a BIG NAME teaching hospital. You've probably heard of it. This was my dream job and looked like it was going to be a great situation. The training program that I was looking for (3 months). The educator there seemed to take a dislike to me from day 1 (started calling me her "problem child" from the day I met her, which I thought was bizarre. She bounced me around between 8 different preceptors. She said they all said the same universally negative things about me. I worked extremely hard to make things work, but eventually they fired me (after 3 months). I honestly have never been so depressed or felt so bad in my life. I never even anticipated that it was a possibility to get fired.
Ok this is more than a few sentences. Thanks for reading.
5) So I was at a loss. I did not want to go back to the floor. I thought I'd done pretty well at my first ER job. I made the mistake of asking a lot of simple questions at the dream job, stuff I knew but just wanted to make sure I was doing everything right. Apparently that bothered the educator. I felt like it was really unfair. She said "you are not very experienced, you only have two years of experience and you come from an accelerated program" all of which was on my resume.
Anyway, getting-longish-story short, I ended up getting a contract job at a local hospital. I really liked working there, and everything went pretty well. I generally liked everyone I was working with, and felt like I was doing a good job. One charge nurse occasionally would act impatient with me, but generally things seemed to be going well. No complaints from the staff or management. I was really hoping that I would get my contract renewed, because it's a wealthy hospital and there are a lot of women who are pregnant there. I've been asking them for two weeks if my contract would be renewed, but my boss was out of the office for a week. So I've been waiting.
Today I found out that I'm not going to be renewed. I'm really bummed. It's way better than being fired, but I'm concerned about my resume. I thought if I did 6 months there, I would feel a lot more confident about my career. I feel a bit like I'm out on the skids again. If I'd never taken the job at the teaching hospital, I'd be coming onto my 2nd year of good ED experience at my original hospital. But because I made that jump, I feel like I'm really struggling to get my resume to look good.
I remember the interview process to get this contract was minimal. I'm hoping I can get another contract shortly and just move one with things. I'm just a bit confused about how to proceed. I really don't want to move out of my city, but I guess I might have to depending on what's available (I live on the east coast).
Any advice or thoughts? On the good side, I wasn't sure if I would be able to survive a travel contract, and I did. I feel pretty good about the work I've been doing. I know that I'm a new, greenish nurse, but I think my instincts have been good. And it was just a three month contract. I'm just stressed out about being a green nurse with another job jump on my resume and no end in site.
Soliloquy, MSN, APRN, NP
457 Posts
I'm really happy for you. :) congratulations :)