Non Acute Care/ ICU jobs for new graduates

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I will be graduating from an ASN program in a few short months. After that I will be pursuing my bachelor's degree online which should only take me about a year, if even.

I was wondering what kind of jobs in a rural area are available to New Grad RN's that are not Acute Care or ICU nursing.

In my program we get mostly med-surg experience. Also, a small amount of maternity and psych. So far, psych is the only thing I have truly enjoyed. However, there are limited jobs in my area within that field. I am just trying to weigh my options...

** Please no snarky comments on what did you expect, blah blah blah..... Don't want your negativity.

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Doctors office, long term care, dialysis

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Not to be rude but this type of question is asked very often here. Did you do a search?

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Yes i have. and many things are just people repeating the same things over and over. such as you need a year med surg for anything else. which, i do not see how. when my instructor herself said she went straight in to CCU. However, I wanted opinions from others because I live in such a rural area. Urban areas also have a lot more to offer than my area does. Which is why I specifically stated that where I live is very rural. Therefore, where there may be job abundance in an area like infection control somewhere urban. Here where I live someone basically has to die, or retire to get that job because there is only one infection control nurse. There is one nursing home, and one very small hospital that sends nearly everyone out to bigger hospitals here. Everything else is nearly an hour drive away. Yes, I should prob move if I want more options haha.

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Maybe hospice? Mine would hire for visit nurses but not case managers. Home health?

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Pretty much everything outside the hospital is eager for nurses, even new ones. I got 4 job offers outside the hospital. One was with a psych hospital, one was in consulting, one was in a rural public health clinic, and one was in a nonprofit public health clinic. I also had two interviews which I did not attend since I got the job offers, in occupational health and rural public health. I didn't apply to SNF's or prisons but I am sure they have their arms wide open too. Right now I do both clinic work and case management.

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Specializes in SICU, trauma, neuro.

Are we from the same hometown?? :) The other RNs I graduated high school with mostly took jobs at the local SNF; one went to work at the critical access hospital 20 miles away. Right now I'm in an RN-to-BSN program w/ several newish RNs who work in home health. I'm sure there's a lot of regional variation, but where I am now (a metro area in the Midwest), most of the jobs available to new grads are outside the hospital. Nearly all of the hospital postings I see--even med-surg, which I was told was *the* place to start back when I was in school--require either previous experience or *current* experience.

If you don't want to (or can't) relocate, I'd apply to the nursing home and the hospital, or at least consider the hospital if the nursing home doesn't have a position. My limited experience shadowing in a rural hospital was very different than urban/suburban ones; they don't have pts who are AS acutely ill if they send the really sick ones out, and I didn't sense that same sense of entitlement to Excellent Customer Service like they were staying at the Hilton. You could call your county health dept. and find out if they have a visiting nurse program for home health visits.

You could also check out the Rural Nursing forum here on AN and see what kinds of nursing they do.

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