Picking between 2 job offers (new grad)

eah87 · Sep 11, 2016

Sorry if this is the wrong section.

I'm a new grad AGNP (just passed my boards last week). I've applied to about 12-15 positions over the last month or two and have heard nothing back except one rejection and the following two offers:

1) Geriatric primary care in the home setting, which is where I did my clinicals for 6 months. Unfortunately, this one is part-time (a little more than 50% full time salary coming to about 50k/year). It's one day of annual exams (the kind needed for Medicaid/Medicare insurance purposed) and one day of pain management (likely to be more follow up and monitoring rather than prescribing). If and when it becomes full time, it will add a day of primary care management (about 15-20 patients). Benefits are pretty good and at least partially cover every main thing (it's a very small company,

2) Hospice face to face visits. This position is full time, doing about 6 in home visits per day to certify/re-cert hospice patients. No prescribing or chronic illness management. Full benefits. It's for a larger organization that has various hospice and palliative departments and is hoping to expand what already exists.

My long-term career goals are to work in palliative/hospice care, ideally in an outpatient palliative setting. I would like to become certified as a hospice & palliative NP which requires a certain number of hours in a hospice/palliative specific setting. Job #2 will probably be boring but it will compensate me better (in terms of paying back those student loans, ugh) and will help me get my foot in the door. Job #1 has slightly better experience (much better experience if it develops into a full time job) but the annual exams are just as boring as hospice certs.

Sorry this is a lot of info, but I'm really struggling to make this decision. I also am wary to turn them *both* down because I've heard so many horror stories of searching for jobs forever, bad first jobs, etc and I really need to start making a salary ASAP. I can survive off the part-time job until my student loan payments kick in at 6 months.

Any advice or related experience? Thanks in advance!