chuym

Expect to be un/under employed, folks. Remember, the nursing management doesn't care about you or you skills that you know you have.

So, how does one get more experience for an entry level job?! This is feeling so absurd and reminds me of Catch-22 more and more: You need acute care experience to get in to acute care, but you need acute care experience to get into acute care, but... (ad nauseam). Is anyone else running into this kind of thing? Anyone have any recommendations? I am married and we are trying to have kids soon, but the only thing I can think of at this point is going out of state/country to get one year of experience, but with that the personal reference thing is less useful... I guess I kind of expected to be able to, I don' know, be a nurse at some point in my nursing career. Currently, I am in LTC pushing pills and being a glorified Medication Technician that does dressings and documentation. The interviewers made it clear that this was not a helpful position.

Keep Trying. You were probably the most brilliant people in that program and you will be able to do great things. Be sure to use your contacts from others in the program. Pester them to name drop you and inquire for you. It took me months of networking in my current job to get this most recent acute care interview. Good luck.

What I ended up doing is being the most knowledgable and showing confidence in the field. I was asked to leave by the patients 2 times during my rotation and it worked very well to just say "thank you, I understand." and knocked on the door once everything was over and congratulated them on their new child. That allowed me to have their trust and was able to do the kids new baby exam and do some discharge teaching with the parents. It is going to happen, more likely than not. Best to not get worked up about it. Good luck. I feel that was one of my most rewarding rotations.

I have gotten used to the term of "Murse" which makes me smile. It is done in love, obviously, as I have respect of my peers and the families, so it does not bother.

Just remember, all; when you get in the program, grades do NOT MATTER. You get a 4.0 in labs and theory. great. Fail to do well in clinical, you are out. Be prepared for a bit of a paradigm change. Good luck, folks. Keep in mind that if you get in or not does not mean that you will not be a nurse or a good one. Don't give up.