PhD with no experience

What are your goals after you obtain your PhD? It sounds like you enjoy doing research and most doctorate nurses are not working at the bed side. But to answer your question, yes it is always good to get at least a year of acute care experience.

I would like to be a clinical researcher eventually. My situation is a bit different from others. I am an international student on a student visa and because of that, it can be much harder for me to find a hospital that is willing to hire me. Plus, I will have to leave this country if I can't get a job in 90 days following graduation.. I guess my question should have been, is it really disadvantage for me to go straightly to a graduate school? I don't know if I should take a risk of not being able to find an employer for the sake of getting hospital experiences that I may or may not be going to have.

You're going to have a very difficult--if not impossible--time finding work as a nurse-researcher with no clinical experience. It's not just a question of graduate school being a good idea or not. Plus, I'm having trouble understanding how you'll even know which nursing/pt care issues warrant your research if you've never worked as an RN.

Plus, PhD programs in nursing will expect you to be able to articulate some idea of your research interests in order to be an attractive candidate, and those usually arise from one's clinical experience. It's hard to know what you want to research in nursing without having any nursing experience on which to draw.

Thank you for your reply. I am doing undergraduate researches as a part of my Honors Project and working as an research assistant in the school that I would like to go. I attended several chances to attend meetings and presentations of doctors and other healthcare professionals about current healthcare issues. And I have an idea of what I would like to study about. Since i have a lot of limitations in getting a job as an international student, I am thinking of attending nursing externship program that are provided during every summer (if I go to graduate school..the program will be temporary but i can only work temporarily with a student visa anyway.) Would it count as nursing experience? Your advice is much appreciated!

Since the OP feels it is unlikely she will get the necessary visa to work in this country, why not go for more school? PhD programs are 4-5 years, plenty of time to get some bedside experience doing PRN work on weekends, over breaks, in the summer...