Peds PDN to hospital?

[Meerkats]

Hello all. My first RN job is pedi home health (PDN) with an agency. I didn't think I'd end up in pedi nursing, but I am enjoying it very much. I would like to transition into floor nursing, possibly pedi med surg after a year or so. I will be working on my ADN to BSN in the meantime. I've heard it is difficult to get into a hospital job after being in home health, but I hope that having a BSN will help.

Do you all have any advice to help me gain a leg up when I decide to apply to hospital jobs in the pedi world?

[nursel56]

Hi Meerkats! First, I agree, the BSN will help. Beyond that, the job market in nursing is so much more unpredictable in recent years, much of this will depend on factors specific to your location and demand for a specialty like pediatrics.

Conventional wisdom has been that only acute care hospital experience gets you in the door. Then somebody posted here about how her private duty peds experience was seen as a big plus and she got that peds hospital job. So, a couple of ideas to consider:

The initial perception of private duty almost never includes the trach/ventilator management, the ability to quickly assess and intervene when changes in medically fragile children occur, so talk about that.

If possible, it would be a good idea to take cases that offer an opportunity to broaden your skill set and knowledge base. All of that can be emphasized when you start the interview process.

I think private duty offers the ability to communicate with households that are very challenging, another point hiring managers don't realize, likely because it's handled by social work services.

You can begin a sort of preliminary networking process, which at this point is nothing pushy whatsoever, just getting to know the people you come into contact with anyway, such as pharmacists, doctors and other providers, respiratory therapists etc. Someday they could put in a good word for you.

Hope that helps a little. Best wishes!