Nursing students not happy to hear about how tough it is to get started as a nurse

[dnsonthego]

I teach fundamentals and M/S clinical in NYC. I have a mix students in my class. My current group of 10 students are all young adults working on their first degree. The students have spoken with the unit nurses and have been informed about the competitive environment nurses must navigate to get a job and to progress up the career ladder. The students have expressed shock about the job market as they believe that we are still in a nursing shortage. When they asked me, I told them that new nurses are having a difficult time getting positions and that it is their responsibility as adults to investigate potential careers opportunities. The students expressed that they were told that their are jobs for everyone upon graduation and that hospitals are begging for nurses. I told them that was a while ago, for now hospitals and other employers are being selective about who they hire. The college usually discusses how to search for a job towards the last semester as part of their leadership class. My question is how do other educators or schools handle student unease with the current job market for nurses?

[FloatRN19]

Tell them to be proactive and finding a job is hard regardless of the current climate of nursing jobs being in shortage or surplus. They need to get the idea out of there head that they have an area they want to work in. Start applying early and applying often. Nursing jobs are out there, take the first one they can find unless they have multiple offers in a short window. It's better to spend a year in something they hate then waiting 8 months to find a job. Also most important, don't mess around with boards and take a mini vacation after graduation, take their ati/Kaplan/etc seriously.

Just a random jumble of everything i did wrong. And that's not including being mislead by the unit director of the unit I precepted on.

[Farawyn]

Graduated 1993. I finished nursing school, got married, went on my honeymoon and took my boards the week I came back (with a #2 pencil!) I was working by September as a "graduate nurse" as I didn't get my board results back until November.

Ah. the good old days.

[Palliative Care, DNP]

Many also ignore evidence of a shortage of jobs because they are "special" and will get their dream job right out of school because they have a plan. Special snowflakes you know.

This! On another group a member was celebrating graduating from an ADN program. I said congratulations and suggested that she continue on in school as the job market leans towards BSNs in many areas. You would have thought I was the anti-Christ to make that suggestion. Snowflake will discover soon enough I suppose...

[Newbie_RN17]

In my ADN program we were told not to work at ALL during our first semester orientation. We were also assured that there was a nursing shortage. Flash forward to fourth semester when we were told that finding a job would be difficult, to look into BSN programs ASAP, and that we'd be lucky to have a job in the next 6 months. Luckily, the hospitals in the area randomly had a bunch of new grad positions open but people who graduated in December weren't as lucky. I started applying for jobs well in advance of graduation and had a plan in place to start my BSN program in August (which I still will be) and a plan for how to survive in the meantime while trying to find a job as well. I would have taken ANY job offered in order to stay afloat and keep my skills up and was lucky to have a choice. Some of my classmates won't be as lucky because they still haven't passed the exit HESI and may have to repeat our 4th semester despite passing the course and clinical, but that's a topic for another post.

Tl;dr version: we were told upon entrance that there were tons of jobs and then at the end of the program the carpet was pulled out from under us.

[flyersfan88]

Many also ignore evidence of a shortage of jobs because they are "special" and will get their dream job right out of school because they have a plan. Special snowflakes you know.

Just went through this in another post with someone who lives in my area, planning to go to my same.program. Nevermind that I'm working and went through it, my advice fell on deaf ears.

[johsonmichelle]

Well I'm still in nursing school and already know this. I try to tell my classmates but they don't want to listen. People have advised to get a tech job in order to make connections in the hospital. Some students know about the employment problem but don't want to believe it or think it won't happen to them.

[turtlesRcool]

Thank you! Honestly, knowing where I am now, I may not have pursued nursing at all. I do enjoy it, but working weekends and holidays has been more difficult than I anticipated. My ex husband is not very willing to accommodate my schedule (despite the fact that he does not work and/or pay child support) so I have to pay babysitters or rely on family (who are MORE than willing to help-- I have an amazing family!). I took a job as a school nurse to allow me the most time with my kids and to avoid paying a few thousand a month in child care in the summer but had to take a massive pay cut for it, so I work another job as well. As the saying goes... If I knew then, what I know now.... I would have pursued teaching. Same schedule, significantly higher pay (at least in IL, I know many states pay their school nurses on a higher pay scale)

I left teaching for nursing. It only seems like the same schedule. I taught high school English at a competitive school, and I was always working nights and weekends trying to keep up with the lesson prep, parent emails, and a never-ending pile of grading. I was never able to get out from under the mountain of essays. The only way I could sort-of keep up was a really awesome husband who took on a lot of the child care and household chores so I could work many, many off-the-clock hours my job required.

But at least I had a job. There is definitely no teacher shortage, either. At least in my area, there are more nursing jobs than teaching jobs, and I know education grads who have spent years working low-paying no-benefit sub jobs.

Full-time nursing is way fewer hours per week than full-time teaching. And if you work in a hospital, starting pay is higher. The grass is always greener, eh?

[raisincookie]

We had been warned that there were few jobs for graduate nurses the very first day of orientation for nursing school, which was back in 2011.However externships in the NYC area are very competitive and we were at a disadvantage because my particular school was an ASN program and the majority of our GPA's took huge hits while completing nursing school. We were encouraged to make as many connections as possible during clinical's, to join nursing organizations as students, to join our nursing school club, volunteer etc. I do wish they would have done more in regards to job fairs, resume building and counseling, but I believe that heard past graduates complaints and have done more to help the current nursing students in that regard.

We were also heavily encouraged to continue our education to gain our BSN and the vast majority of our class heeded the warning and enrolled in RN-BSN courses. We were warned that most hospitals did not hire ASN nurses so we were at least partially emotionally prepared for constant rejection. The few of my friends that did find jobs in acute care post graduation had connections (managers, directors and the like).

* I didn't realize they added our titles in our usernames now (I have been away so l, I don't know if it's a good or a bad thing

[la_chica_suerte85, BSN, RN]

They wait until we're in the middle of OB, completely disoriented from the radical change to specialties, and then they let us have it. BAM!

Actually, it's spoken about pretty regularly. I'm in southern CA so the job prospects aren't great. It doesn't keep me up at night but I am busting my butt to be as competitive as possible. I'm still terrified that I won't find a job at all in anything anywhere. This is still something that doesn't seem to have dawned on my other peers too much. Some of us are really getting some serious experience down for our resumes. Others are still in the "I just have to pass NCLEX" mode.

[Annalee4281]

I am not an educator but I am a former nursing manager for surgical services and OB in a small rural hospital. What I told nursing students when they were coming through for brief rotations through surgery was to do their best to shine during their clinical rotations and in a small hospital we notice. I did have a new nurse that was hired as a superuser to help train our nurses for the new EMR. He couldn't find a job as a nurse. He was working way below his pay grade as a trainer and he was working with several people from his class. If I had a position I would have hired him. I was impressed with his work ethic. I called the OR manager at our sister hospital and asked her to interview him for her open spot. She hired him, sent him for a surgical internship. Attitude and a good work ethic are noticed. It may be noticed by the nurse they are shadowing who passes it on. Treat clinical like a very long job interview.

[Glycerine82, LPN]

Maybe they have other professors who have told them otherwise?

I just had fundamentals lecture today and my professor put a HUGE emphasis on the "nursing shortage". Everyone believes they will have no problem getting a job when they get out.....

I know better, but I do wish she knew what she was talking about.

[BrandonLPN, LPN]

Many also ignore evidence of a shortage of jobs because they are "special" and will get their dream job right out of school because they have a plan. Special snowflakes you know.

To play the devil's advocate, it is entirely possible that they *do* have a viable plan of some sort. Maybe they're a tech on the floor they plan to work on. Maybe they have connections. Maybe they're one of those rare nursing students who've done thorough research of the job market, know that hospital jobs are scarce, and are willing to work in non-traditional settings.