staple1027

3 years post graduation and still no nursing job (working as a hospital CNA) , BSN still looking, works with me at target, cannot get hired anywhere. I could go on with example after example. Northeast PA reached full saturation point 10 years ago, but the schools keep churning out the grads. Biggest hospital system in area 2 year hiring freeze,layoffs galore, no one is getting hired no matter the degree. People are taking unpaid internships just to get their feet in the door. Until the nursing schools are held accountable for saturating the market , we will see wages rolling backwards like they already have until it hits minimum wage.

sounds like a saturated market , same as PA...new grads getting churned out, even BSN prepared, and they are out of work a whole year after graduation. Any experience better than none, and hopefully you do not wind up being an unpaid intern for a year...like a nearby hospital is currently doing to people because the job market is so dry, they get away with it.

Nursing has a whole lot of cattiness that goes on. Ever hear of the expression "nurses eat their young"...its a conundrum that has existed in this profession for decades. My best guess is because you are a BSN (LTC generally has fewer BSNs and more ADNs) you are seen as a threat to whomever is in management ...maybe that or those people are not BSNs....maybe not. But for me its been 20 years, and I'd be lying if I said that there were not at least a few rotten apples in every single place. Women angry because they are supporting their entire households, angry because they got dumped from their last job, angry because their husband left them, angry for any reason or no reason, jealousy, bitterness, obesity (thats a big one) , etc...I think I've seen it all. Another tactic I've seen is that the facility prefers constant turnover to long standing employees. When there is constant turnover, no one is getting any benefits at all, b/c by the time they accrue, the person is long gone (much less expensive). So there are some places that literally try to force the staff to quit. Not sure of your exact fiancial situation, but quitting without another job hurts alot (yep, I've done it) , should be avoided whenever possible, (its harder to collect unemployment) but ya gotta do what ya gotta do. If the situation is so toxic that you are unable to function at your job, then maybe your time would be better spent at home hitting the job ads from your computer. Like I said before, people who try to strip a person of their confidence do not belong in this industry, yet they exist, and even find their way into management. I have a management degree from a former career, and always take note of how poorly prepared many of the "nurse managers, DONS, etc" really are, and I doubt they have ever taken even one management class.

May I ask what area you are in? I've walked in your shoes, and have seen this happen to so many other nurses six ways to sunday. What happens around here is that the hospitals hire a whole bunch of new grads but rarely transition any of them out of orientation. Its been going on for years now, and the new nurse does not realize upon hire, that she is there basically auditioning for a job in the future that isnt guaranteed to be available. Their reason for this is that they think somewhere in those first 90to 180 days of your job a staff nurse will resign, go out on leave, retire, etc, and then there will be another nurse already trained and ready to slide into the vacancy. Problem is, no one is retiring, jobs are scarce, nurses who have jobs are staying planted where they are, and consequently the result is the new grad is dismissed before she or he can transition. I have also witnessed and experienced preceptors who sink their new grad on spite, out of jealousy, or for no reason at all. Happens all the time. Happenned to me twice (ER and a step down unit) where the unit manager told me I was useless and to return to nursing school, that "the girls didn't like me", etc, etc..of course we know (wink, wink) that it could not have possibly had anything to do with the bogus sign on bonus they never had any intention of paying out. Very recently, I heard of this happenning again to another nurse, at the same hospital I worked years ago. The guy relocated with his family for a job there, and in 90 days his preceptor pulled the plug and told him he was not cut out for nursing. If you made it through nursing school, trust me, you are not incompetent. There is a special place in hell for managers who already know they have NO position for the new grad to transition to, yet instead of telling the nurse the truth, they intentionally and maliciously strip you of your confidence. Here's what I have learned to do with people like that...take note of their name, put your car in drive, hit the gas, and don't even look in the rearview mirror. Onward. LTC is harder work than hospital work, trust me. Stay put for awhile, then decide where you want to go, and do not let anyone step on your dreams.

There is a new grad BSN I know who cannot pay her student loans, because the hospital she is working for is paying piss poor wages, because they can (saturation point reached years ago for RNs, and BSNs). She is making the same money I made 17 years ago when I first started, so...do the math on that, the BSN scam is alive and well, and its sad and sort of infuriating at the same time.

Exactly. BSN classes are exorbitantly expensive if you go the online route, and the traditional classroom instruction at this point in my life/ career is like sucking a rotten egg (sorry) ....it does not change the scope, the knowledge, or the pay rate, but really just places a work/ life burden on all existing ADNS, just because some useless think tank said so. At this point, if I were to return to any type of schooling, it would be certificate based in the building trades so I could expand my employment opportunities in that venue, but most definately not the BSN route.

Sadly, its hapenned a whole lot around here, where the market is over saturated and nurses are a dime a dozen, regularly abused, and often sent packing when a cheaper new grad enters the picture.

I went into nursing as a second career, after having achieved a BS and an MA in other fields. I am ADN prepared, and not so happy that this degree is being locked out of hospital nursing in place of the required BSN. There is something demoralizing about being told, if I want to eat, I have to go back to school, with all the schooling I already have. Not me. No way. Not today. Not tomorrow. Not next year. Its a higher education scam brought to you by left wing think tanks in Washington , DC. A way for schools to enrich themselves while putting more than half the nursing workforce out of work, or in a position of limited employment options. A BSN does not make for a better nurse, because 99% of what you gain in nursing comes from learning hands on, at the bedside, not from classrooms. Therefore, until I can retire, I just have to grin and bear the thought that homecare, LTC or corrections/ psych are what is available.

There are just some jobs that do not work out. If I've been at a job a decent amount of time and plan on including it on my resume, I give two weeks. A couple times in my career I walked into a frying pan, and left within the first week. Shat happens. No notice. A couple of other times I gave 2 weeks only to then be fired on the spot. One job was so miserable, I reported off to the supervisor, left mid shift, then wrote a scathing resignation effective immediatley. I have seen employers in and out of healthcare fire people during their 2 weeks notice, and am wondering if 2 weeks notice has gone out of style like the curly cord wall phone? Of course this all depends if you have a PTO balance that needs to be used or paid, or any other benes in the pot. I have heard that nurses giving 2 weeks are then terminated immediately, and this is becoming more the norm than the anomoly. I think that we can all agree, the 30 year career at one job, then retiring has all but vanished, and now its common game to have a dozen or more jobs, and 1, 2 or even 3 different careers. After 20 years in this field, I have also learned that an employer will never hesitate to abuse the heck out of nurses with unsafe staffing, so long as the nurse allows him or herself to be abused. Any thoughts?

The job listings are a major part of the problem here in northeast PA. If one went by the job listings, one would see dozens upon dozens of jobs, problem is they are listed by shell companies that do not actually exist, or exist in another state and spam the job ads, or they are listed by sponsored employers who have no jobs, but just want to use the job ads to see how many unemployed nurses there are, to keep an endless pile of fresh resumes on hand, so they can fire at will and grab the next sucker for a dollar an hour less than the last nurse. There is one giant hospital system around here that has had a hiring freeze in place for the last 2 years, but that does not stop them from posting bogus ads, knowing they are not hiring anyone. If one went by the job ads posted, you would think there is a nursing shortage. Sadly, this is what got me and hundreds of others about 20 years ago to take the plunge and head to nursing school. Do not get me started on the bogus "sign on bonuses" that are 100% false because no one ever collects them. I can honestly say that going into nursing was the biggest career mistake I made. Would have been better off 20 years ago taking the paycut instead of the layoff, and just building myself back up from the bottom.

can you tell me where in NE PA there is a need? been dwelling here for decades and cannot find work anywhere. thanks.

You should head out to PA, where each and every hospital has it plastered on their website careers section, BSN required. It does not matter if you have an alphabet full of letters, degrees, certs, designations behind one's name. If the magic BSN is missing, your application goes straight to a garbage bin. And now that more than half of the 7,000 Rns they are churning out every year are BSNs, many of those new grads are unemployed here as well. PA is the absolute worst state for nursing jobs, a saturated market with a glut of nurses so bad, that wages are less now than they were 20 years ago. It must depend on which state you are in. This entire state used to be a manufacturing state, fast forward, hence everything went overseas, and whats left became automated. What is left? Go to nursing school, be a bank teller, a teacher or a cashier at a retail outlet.

Thank you for the info...when its time to relocate I will consider MD.

Its also important to say that I went into this to be the sole supporter of my household, not make side money. I have told people considering this as a career, to think long and hard before taking out loans, and if you think you will be able to be the sole supporter of your household as a nurse, then your head is stuck where the sun dont shine. Sorry, to put it politley, its become a retirement career, side money, gig economy, but nothing remotely solid , steady or reliable.

I was let down over the years because I believed the false propoganda that nurses were in very high demand here. To this day (Ok if you want to call me a conspiracy theorist) I do believe that there has been a 3 decades long underground plan to socialize medicine in the USA, and for that to succeed, healthcare becomes a charity, which then in turn, needs employees who are willing to work for little to nothing, to support free healthcare for all. So, they begin with the never ending false job ads, fake sign on bonuses click bait, that no one ever gets, establishing more and more nursing schools, churning out nurses at a rate which guarantees supply is much higher than demand, and the end result being nurses desperate for a job, not enough jobs to support the available supply of nurses, which then creates people willing to work for peanuts, and take jobs that once were dived by three people, but now have become one. This is the picture here in PA, and even new grad BSNs are finding unemployment upon graduation, LPNs have left the field, RNs are doing LPN work, and overall great harm has come to the profession as a result. With all the bureacracy in this state, one would think there would be some type of control over saturation of a job market....yet that is exactly what was intended.