Hello everyone! Long time lurker, first time poster 🙂
I will be graduating with my BSN through an accelerated post-bac program this May (yay!). I have been applying to jobs since the beginning of the year, and was offered a position in a new grad residency program that starts early August. The offer is at a magnet hospital that is a 511-bed community-based, acute care teaching facility, in an adult cardiac stepdown unit. I got the offer 1.5 months ago, and finally got the official contract about two weeks ago, but for some reason I've been really hesitant to sign it.
Ultimately, I know that I want to work in pediatrics. I've always worked with kids, my first degree led me to a career working with kids, and I knew that if I became a nurse I'd be a pediatric nurse. However, I had applied to MANY new graduate pediatric nursing positions to no avail, so I had started to accept that "any experience is better than no experience" and was excited about my cardiac stepdown offer.
About a week or two ago I told myself that I was going to apply to any children's hospital positions that remotely appealed to me, and even if I got an offer in a city or state that I didn't have an interest in, I could work anywhere for 1-2 years to gain experience working with children. WELL, I just interviewed at a children's hospital that is a 222-bed, not-for-profit pediatric medical center, in a big city that I never thought of moving to. It is not magnet recognized, but it is working toward it, and I got 2 offers on two different units.
SO, long long story short. Would it be better to accept an offer at a children's hospital working w/ a population that I am interested in, in a city I've never been to, and for a hospital that isn't magnet. OR would it be better to accept an offer at a university hospital working w/ an adult population, in a city that I've been to before, at a magnet hospital. I'd stay for 2 years at either location, but I just don't know if location/hospital is better than experience/patient population and I need HELP please.
Thank you so so so so much in advance!!
xoxoxo
