BartC_RN

Sorry, a little late to topic. It's fast. Very, very fast.

I appreciate this thread. I've been bothered by all of this in my short career so far. A lot of the things y'all are discussing has effected me very deeply. I guess it's cathartic to read everyone's thoughts.

I'm a year and a half graduated and one year this week into my first job and I'm just now starting to feel kind of okay. I have great coworkers on my unit....I'm lucky. I trust probably over 90 percent of them. It seems like, for the most part, we're all the same age and the ones that are older and been doing it longer are the ones that honestly love the job and like teaching the rest of us. Again, I feel fortunate for this. Usually, the only ones that treat you like you're "not in the club" are the ones from other areas that don't know you. I've dreaded getting up in the morning the 4th or 5th day in a row, but once I get moving, doing assessments, etc that goes away. I have honestly yet to dread the work which reinforces my decision to this. Do I feel competent? Sometimes yes and sometimes no. I still ask lots of questions and get aggravated with myself when I miss things that I ought to know. We're so busy I can't think straight sometimes and that bothers me. We've recently started doing something on our unit that makes me feel more like a hospital secretary buried in paper work than an RN. I believe it's something that compromises safety but what do I know, I haven't been around that long. When do I really feel incompetent? During codes when the ICU nurses come over. But overall my life as a nurse is better than it was a year ago.

Usually 6:1 on days with techs/assts and monitor techs. Turnover being what it is, it can easily change to 7:1 or 4:1 or even less on a dime. Max is 8:1 which seems to be pretty rare. It happens but not often. 6:1 or higher doesn't feel very safe to me. It feels like complete chaos most of the time. Needless to say, 12 hours passes VERY quickly. BartC

I graduated in May '09 and just finished my second week on a cardiac med/surg floor....why it took so long to get a job is another story for another thread. I feel like my school prepared me very well to pass NCLEX. Our written tests were horrendous, we lost about half our class over 5 semesters. I guess we had the typical skill checkoffs all other nursing schools have but I'm finding real life skills are a different can of worms which is what everybody always says anyway. So I expected that. I also feel like my program prepared me pretty well to be in possibly a critical care setting where you've got 2 incredibly sick patients you can throw all your thought and effort into. Right now, I'm getting five patients and building towards taking care of 8. So far it's complete chaos. It's completely task oriented at this point with little thought into what's really going on. Where's the time to think about what's going on with patient's when there are so many tasks to accomplish? Luckily we've got a great rapid response team. My last week of school we did this thing called "Clinical Preparation Day" where our instructors put us in a mock situation with "patients" being played by our peers and they threw everything and the kitchen sink at us. It was completely insane and I thought med/surg can't possibly be this wild. But it is. Not everyday, but some days yes. My charge nurse that's orienting me for 6 weeks seems to know what's going on with my patients all the time, so I'm thinking, experience is the thing here. You eventually develop a routine with the tasks to the point you don't have to think about them and can think about patients instead. When does this happen? We shall see. It's chaos but I love it. BartC RN

Well, ladies and gentlemen, I got hired today for the job I wanted before I graduated...pending background check and tox screen. After 5 months of waiting....and doing yard work to survive. I won't go into the whole process and what I've been doing to land a job because I'm sure we're all very well acquainted with that. I will, however, attribute it to persistence with applications and showing my face in HR about once a month. And a lot of praying. So I won't be having to commute or move and I'll be on track to move to critical care at some point which is what I love. Good luck to everybody still looking.

Out of nursing school 5 months tomorrow. Still no job. No bites in over a month. Out of all the hundreds of applications and resumes and cover letters, only 3 interviews so far, and they all felt gratuitous. I went and applied for an LTC job today. In the job description it says for RNs "3 years experience required." But I applied anyway. The manager of the place is a friend of mine, but I don't know if that is worthy of over-looking my lack of experience when they want 3 years. We'll see.

My AF recruiter has been outstanding. He has been enthusiastic, honest and up-front about everything. He's never even asked me to commit. He basically outlined all parts of the opportunity and asked if I was interested and if I was we could get started. I was considering Navy and AF and have ended up concentrating mostly on the Air Force for something that's probably pretty small: COT is in Montgomery, AL which is 2 hours from where I live and Navy Officer Training is in Rhode Island. I know the arguments that well, you're going to end up at a far away duty station eventually anyway but I'm totally new to the military way of life, and my rationale is starting out closer to home will probably ease the transition. I'm 37 years old, so the travel is not what's at the top of my priority list. The Navy recruiter I talked to didn't really seem interested in the whole situation, so I kind of let it go. The Air Force has just felt more right for me so far. It has been basically just a gut feeling. Good Luck!

I'm a second degree as well and second the comments made so far. Pay back loans, great training, etc. The whole package far exceeds a civilian job.

I met my recruiter in-person today for the first time and got the paper work officially underway. Took care of some odds and ends. MEPS will be next. Don't know when yet because I have an injury that has to be dealt with before I can go.

Hey thanks! Before I ever talked to a recruiter, I read a lot of information on here and was expecting basically a used car salesman. But I've been surprised so far because he seems to be really on the ball.

And no I haven't done MEPS or the interview yet.

You got it, this is the first one. He's in Nashville and I'm about 3 to 4 hours away. We've talked on the phone pretty extensively. He's coming down to Huntsville, AL to pick up someone who's going to the Chief Nurse interview, so we're kind of meeting half way. He requested early on that my wife come along to the meeting because his words were, "It's not just you joining. You're family is joining too." So that has put me at ease.

I graduated this past May and have been talking to my area AF Healthcare Recruiter since July. Gathered all my paperwork and got my application together and sent by the end of August. I've got a face-to-face with the recruiter tomorrow. I might be looking at January COT. We'll see. I still have a lot of questions to ask, etc, etc. I'm 37 so this is interesting. I'm looking forward to tomorrow.

That's awesome! LOL.

I understand all of this. I'm still looking too. A lot of friends of mine are stunned that I'm not working as a nurse yet. It's shocking to some people that you go on an interview and don't get hired on the spot. So far nobody I've interviewed with has been willing to hire a NG. Both hospitals and nursing homes, etc in my area are completely ignoring me. I've submitted applications over and over, made tons and tons of phone calls and just shown up several times. It's very frustrating.

Hi, I graduated 05/2009. Still looking for my first job and been looking since well before graduation. I can't believe the difficulty I've been having. The Army Nurse Corps was always coming and talking to us but I automatically assumed I was too old. I'm 37 and have since found out all branches go up to 42 and sometimes beyond. I've already begun application with the Navy and the Air Force and started looking into the Army this morning. From talking to recruiters and doing research on this board and elsewhere, I'm finding out civilian nurse jobs almost look bad compared to military nurse jobs. So I'm working on all this application process. It's exciting and scary all at the same time. I've got a family too so that makes it even more interesting. good luck!

Hi all, I've been reading this forum for a while and just wanted to chime in. I got my BSN on May 1st and passed NCLEX on May 19th. Army Nurse recruiters were always coming by and talking to us and it always sounded like a great deal to me but I'm 37. To make a long story short I found out I can join the Navy Nurse Corps up to age 42 and with the economy being what it is, the nurse corps has gotten more attractive to me by the week because I'm still looking for my first job. My federal loan payments start in November and things just aren't looking all that great. Not to mention I'm married with one child. And I've always like the Navy and was interested in joining years and years ago. So anyway, I've read all I can get my hands on including a promotional packet with DVD I recently got in the mail and I talked to a Navy Medical Recruiter today. He told me all slots are filled up until October 1. After that, space will fill up fast so if I want to do this we'll have to get going. He sent me an application and after filling that out the next step would be getting an interview in Pensacola. So we'll see how it goes. BartC

Now, Nike Shox In nursing school clinicals, these God-Awful Reebok, solid white shoes with hard-as-rock soles. Night and day.

Do it. If you know there are sacrifices to be made and you're comfortable with that, then don't let that hold you back. I can't really comment on how facilities may or may not discriminate with regard to age, but I can say probably half of my peers in the program I was in were over 30. We even had 2 that were over 50. I'm 37 and started this when I was 33. I had to go BSN because I couldn't get financial assistance to go to my local community college. Luckily there was a university nearby. I came out of the property and casualty insurance industry which I hated. My family and I had to make tremendous sacrifices but it's been worth it because I feel really at home in this, even though I haven't found my first job yet. I took a job as a nursing assistant a year before I graduated and that helped me get really comfortable in the hospital environment. It's humbling work and I love it. I would recommend it to anybody that's looking for something more than a paycheck. Good luck!

I think Meds-Pub has ATI, am I right? I can't remember for sure. I was required to do ATI all through school and then I had access to it online after graduation for about 3 weeks before I took NCLEX. Basically I reviewed the material I felt weak in which I have on DVDs, then I'd take practice tests covering med-surg, then all the specialty areas. I agree with solneeshka in that the actual NCLEX questions were not really close to the practice questions. But I feel like they're in the ballpark. It's like the same style. I passed with 75 questions as well and couldn't believe it when it cut me off. I probably felt confident with less than 5 of the answers I submitted. From what I've heard and read about others' experience, that's the way pretty much every body feels after they take it. Good luck!

Hey everybody, new board member here. I saw the thread title and read the first message and thought I need to vent too. So forgive me for not reading the rest of the thread before I posted. Complete frustration is what I feel. I'm sitting here, it's almost August and I graduated May 1, 2009. All through school I hear that I'm going to have a job waiting. Well where is it? Even before you start school you hear, "You need to go into nursing so you can always find a job." Really? I've been looking and talking to people and attempting to get hired since January. I've submitted an application and/or resume to every facility within 100 miles of my location and still no luck. I'm glad to see I'm not the only one that can't get a soul on the phone. When I call recruiters, managers and HR's, I get voicemail and NEVER, not one time have I gotten a return call. I don't know what associate's programs are like, but in the BSN program I was in, being professional was constantly stressed. And, well, not returning phone calls is extremely unprofessional. I graduated, I passed NCLEX 2 months ago and I'm still sitting here broke with bill collectors ringing my phone off the hook and my federal loan payments start in 3 months. I'm getting really fed up with having to go and beg my parents for a little bit of money here and there. I've got stuff that's very special to me sitting in a pawn shop while I sit here with my BSN cutting grass 2 days a week for about 50 or 60 bucks. I've actually got a plan and feel pretty hopeful, I just needed to vent about this situation. Good luck to everybody that's still looking. BartC