"Not sure what unit you will be hired into..."

[TitaniumPlates]

So this just happened to my best friend.

Jane has been looking to relocate back to her hometown after 3 years in the ICU at a major teaching hospital. She also has 3 years in a level 1 trauma ER.

She interviewed over the phone for a position that was POSTED AS ICU about a month ago. She was immediately asked for her references, which made her feel pretty confident that she would be hired. She told me that during the interview, she asked about how many slots were open, and was told "4".

Well, apparently, the Nurse Manager has written her half a dozen emails regarding her references not answering yet. Its been a week.

That isn't my main problem with this situation. It seems that the Nurse Manager has now changed the job description to....

You will relocate across the country, go through all of our "orientation" (she will not be specific on what that orientation entails) and then one of our educators will decide what unit you will be "eligible" for.

She also told Jane that there are "a dozen or more" nurses starting in a month and there is no way she could possibly give Jane an idea of which unit has openings.

Jane called me and told me all of this nonsense...and I advised her to tell the Nurse Manager to.....well.....file that job under....Uh....NO WAY.

This isn't the first time I have been hearing about this bait and switch in the past year. It's happened to me twice and I wasn't kind about telling the facility to take that job and....

Has this happened to anyone else lately? Is this the new trend in trying to cover the garbage shifts and positions that no one can fill? These positions are outright LIES and they want the highest qualified (3 yr ICU RN) for what....med surg???

[beekee]

You lost me with the last sentence. Nothing wrong with med surg, or any other specialty. We all have value. And all of our patients need us.

[TitaniumPlates]

3 minutes ago, beekee said:

You lost me with the last sentence. Nothing wrong with med surg, or any other specialty. We all have value. And all of our patients need us.

I suppose you missed the part where the job was posted as ICU?

That's my point. I never said one disparaging thing about med surg.

My POINT is deceptive practice.

Really

all you got out of it was that I said an ICU Nurse, who wants to remain in ICU as the job ADVERTISED....want an actual ICU position??

[Orion81RN]

Just now, beekee said:

You lost me with the last sentence. Nothing wrong with med surg, or any other specialty. We all have value. And all of our patients need us.

Same! I was totally with OP throughout the entire post til that last part. I'm not even a med surg nurse, and I found it offensive. There are plenty of ICU nurses who could not handle med-surg. I really hope it was just the way it was worded and not intended to look down on any other specialty.

[Orion81RN]

1 minute ago, TitaniumPlates said:

I suppose you missed the part where the job was posted as ICU?

That's my point. I never said one disparaging thing about med surg.

My POINT is deceptive practice.

Well, when you call it a garbage position... ?

[TitaniumPlates]

Again. Did I say it was a garbage position?

No. I said....this is garbage that a nurse manager is posting positions as ICU, expecting highly specialized ICU nurses to be hired and then switching to....oh...I have no idea what you will be doing.

Reading comprehension.

If the nurse manager wasn't embarrassed about the positions actually needing to be filled .. then why lie?

That alone should insult the highly specialized med surg nurse.

[JadedCPN, BSN, RN]

Just want to point out, as a nurse who started their career years ago in ICU, that ICU is not the "highest qualified" position/nursing as you stated. You've had three people now, including myself, simply informing you that the way you worded your rant about your friend comes across as slightly insulting to med surg nursing, even if that is not what was intended. Perhaps you should humbly listen.

In terms of the actual issue here, I definitely wouldn't be cool with that as an experienced nurse. I've heard of similar type of setups for new grads which makes slightly more sense. Unless I were desperate for a job or super flexible about the job, that would be a hard no from me.

ETA: Many areas of nursing are "highly specialized" (ICU, oncology, cardiology, etc) and as has been discussed ad nauseam on AN in the past regarding if one is "better" or more specialized than the other. In my opinion the answer is no, they're all specialized in their own ways, and that is what makes nursing great. And I second what Orion said about some ICU nurses not being able to handle med-surg - when I transitioned over, it was a harder transition than when I started as a new grad in the ICU.

[llg, PhD, RN]

41 minutes ago, TitaniumPlates said:

Has this happened to anyone else lately? Is this the new trend in trying to cover the garbage shifts and positions that no one can fill? These positions are outright LIES and they want the highest qualified (3 yr ICU RN) for what....med surg???

You're wording in the last paragraph was not clear. It suggests that you believe med/surg to be in the group of "garbage shifts and positions" that you refer to. If you didn't want the adjective "garbage" to be applied to the word "positions," you should have worded things differently.

You'll probably need to do a little back-tracking on that issue before some people will stop focusing on that issue and start focusing on your question.

Personally ... I would not move to a new town and/or accept a position under those conditions. I would want to know what unit I was orienting to. At most, I would go through the orientation, then resign if I didn't like the unit they assigned me to.

[HomeBound]

9 minutes ago, JadedCPN said:

Just want to point out, as a nurse who started their career years ago in ICU, that ICU is not the "highest qualified" position/nursing as you stated. You've had three people now, including myself, simply informing you that the way you worded your rant about your friend comes across as slightly insulting to med surg nursing, even if that is not what was intended. Perhaps you should humbly listen.

In terms of the actual issue here, I definitely wouldn't be cool with that as an experienced nurse. I've heard of similar type of setups for new grads which makes slightly more sense. Unless I were desperate for a job or super flexible about the job, that would be a hard no from me.

I didn't see where the poster said highest.

They said highly.

I agree with OP. Read the actual post.

Why would you say a hard no? Do you think you're better than med surg nurses? This is what those commenters are implying. I didn't see anything that implied op feels that their friend is better . I see that the OP is angry about the lying of the nurse manager.

[JadedCPN, BSN, RN]

3 minutes ago, HomeBound said:

I didn't see where the poster said highest.

They said highly.

I agree with OP. Read the actual post.

Why would you say a hard no? Do you think you're better than med surg nurses? This is what those commenters are implying. I didn't see anything that implied op feels that their friend is better . I see that the OP is angry about the lying of the nurse manager.

Yes, read the post. The very last line, the OP states "These positions are outright LIES and they want the highest qualified (3 yr ICU RN) for what....med surg???"

[HomeBound]

I didn't read it as that . I saw it as the nurse manager wants to lie about the position because nobody wants it yet the rn manager wants specialty experience .

If you or anyone here believes that a med surg nurse is interchangeable with an ICU nurse or vice versa, I would love to hear then why 5 years of ICU nursing experience is required at my hospital to be hired as an ICU nurse? And, curiously, zero years is required for med surg?

[JadedCPN, BSN, RN]

2 minutes ago, HomeBound said:

I didn't read it as that . I saw it as the nurse manager wants to lie about the position because nobody wants it yet the rn manager wants specialty experience .

If you or anyone here believes that a med surg nurse is interchangeable with an ICU nurse or vice versa, I would love to hear then why 5 years of ICU nursing experience is required at my hospital to be hired as an ICU nurse? And, curiously, zero years is required for med surg?

The nurse manager absolutely lied and pulled a bait and switch, which is wrong and I don't believe anyone who has replied is debating that.

And as someone who has years of ICU experience, years of med surg experience, and now floats to both, I never said or believe that they are interchangeable. I'm simply stating I don't believe it is accurately to state ICU nurses are the highest specialized, and I say this from experience as someone who made the transition from ICU to med surg, and then transitioned from med surg to other specialized areas such as Oncology and Pediatric Cardiology. I can't sit here and say that an ICU nurse is "highest specialized" than a nurse who knows their pediatric heart defects front to back and the ins and outs of all the leukemias, cancer protocols, etc. They are just specialized in different ways.