nascentRN

Sounds fishy, no? I don't know where else to put this, so I'll put it here since I'm in New Jersey. I just got off the phone with some recruiter for a social services staffing agency that places nurses in contract mental health positions. Mind you, I have been applying everywhere throughout Nj for two months with hardly a response. One of the staff members at a free clinic where I have been volunteering recommended that I contact this agency. She works in mental health at her real job, but does not know anyone personally at this staffing agency. But, she spoke to someone from this agency and they offered her a job. She said she wasn't looking because she already has the mental health gig, but thinking of me and trying to help, she asked them if they were looking for only experienced nurses. They said, not necessarily. So, she gave me their contact number. So, today, I called the agency and was thrilled that I got an interview. But, upon immediate reflection when I hung up the phone, this recruiter seemed a little too eager to get me in there. Within a minute of talking to her on the phone, she asked me to come in for an interview. She told me everything I'd need to bring, including resume, diploma, cpr card, drivers license and (and this is what really raised a red flag): a $27 dollar fee for a background check. First of all, isn't that a little inexpensive for a background check? Second of all, shouldn't they run the background check AFTER they decide to hire me? Is it normal practice for these contract staffing agencies to run a check at the first interview? Mind you, I have nothing in my background to hide from anyone. It's just that this seems to me like a great way to make a lot of money: interview a couple hundred people a week and collect 30 bucks a pop-- sounds like a great business. A search for this company on the New Jersey better business bureau website turns up nothing. Am I just being paranoid or am I just not that stupid? The thing is this: I'm in such a vulnerable position being unable to find gainful employment that I am ripe for being scammed. I am almost willing to entirely ignore this. Should I go to this interview? I can afford to lose 27 bucks, but not my identity (SSN), you know? I'd appreciate any advice. Thank you for reading.

Howdy, Back at ya! he..he. Oh, geesh, I'm in for a culture shock. lol. I'm from New Jersey. I've only stopped in Texas (Houston I believe) during a fly-over to California. Not to invoke that dreaded buzz word, "flyover country." I don't really like referring to my fellow citizens so dismissively. I know Austin is the live musical capital of the United States or one of them. In addition to having my RN license, I also have a degree in visual arts and play guitar to boot. So, ideally, I would like to land in Austin too. But, unfortunately, I'm not feeling that I can be too discriminatory as to where I wind up. The most important thing is that I find gainful employment and soon. I'm sure that Texas, while maybe not my cup of tea entirely, has many new and interesting experiences to offer me wherever they may be.

Thank you for your response. It's good to hear they were receptive. I was just thinking of perhaps contacting the Board of Nursing in various states I am applying to and then mentioning this somehow in the cover letter. I'm going to try to apply in Tulsa myself and pretty much everywhere else. I hear that nurses are really in demand in Tusla, although interestingly a quick job search on monster does not turn up much. Were did you look? And just out of curiosity, were the call backs you got from postings that mentioned welcoming new grads or did they require more experience but call you anyway? Thank you, again.

I heard in another thread somewhere that San Antonio is the big one, but since I came into this forum for basically the same information you are requesting, I'll see what others have to say. In the meantime, I going to search for jobs in San Antonio and see what comes up.

Did you know that all new grad applications sent out in New Jersey get sucked into a black hole? Really, it's true. There's a big black hole somewhere in New Jersey sucking up all the new grad resumes. This is job market scene here is a trainwreck. Been applying for the two months since the state licensed. I can't continue this much longer. I'm about to take the search nationwide. Nationwide, baby, here I come! Now, er, how do I go about doing this?

I'm not reading anymore of this. I'm a new grad with a fresh RN license. I need a damn job. I need to pay bills. Period. I'll take what I can get. I don't expect it to be a party nor a disco nor a CBGB's. I expect lifetime during wartime. (to reference the talking heads). But better than homelessness. Throw me into the inferno, now please, I am begging! I will stick it out for at least one year to get some experience, do the best I can and then move on!

Congratulations on getting the job. I wish you the best of luck in your career. I live in New Jersey. I got my license here about two months ago after passing the Nclex on the first shot but have not found anything yet after applying liberally throughout my state. I am currently volunteering at a free clinic just to keep at least some of what I have learned as fresh as I can and have now started to apply out of state. I am willing to relocate anywhere for a full-time RN position in any kind of healthcare facility. I noticed that Georgia is not party to the compact agreement among certain states (neither is New Jersey) and I was wondering if you (or anyone else) had any tips on how to approach potential, out of state employers in online applications and cover letters. Obviously, I would like to have a current license in every state I am applying to, but this obviously is not realistic.

i hear that! i waited a month or two longer to take the nclex than some family members officiously advised for my own good and was no less annoyed by this either. of course, no one is second guessing anything i did now that i passed the exam the first time i sat. my feeling was that anyone who thinks that it's the end of the world that, in the grand scheme of things, i'll be an rn merely four weeks later than expected probably needs to get a grip. of course, it sounds like at least your aunt is afraid that you'll wind up never doing it and i think some of the same fears motivated my family's pressure. i figure that if they aren't convinced by now, after several years and successful completion of nursing school, that i am for real about this, then that's their problem, not mine.

Way to Go!

I think this idea about nclex vs real world is interesting. I can see how it seems unfair to people who have years of clinical experience that the Nclex is its own little universe with its own laws. Nurses with years of experience, as PNs for example, are essentially working backwards from practice to theory. Admittedly, this must be frustrating. It's kind of like some music theory professor telling a master of jazz improvisation how to play guitar, or telling jimi hendrix that purple haze was written in dorian mode and that some of the notes he's playing are out of key. However, It can't be any less difficult and frustrating an experience for nurses with less real world chops who must adapt from the nclex, nursing school world to the real world. Approaching the profession from both places has advantages and disadvantages. At the end of the day, however, I'm not sure the real world can be replicated on a test, anyway, or that it would be the most beneficial for the purposes of screening potential new nurses if it could. Understanding the core, textbook knowledge base, and applying this theory with critical thinking to a "perfect nclex hospital", is, it would seem to me, the logical first step that years of clinical experience in the real world is supposed to build on. But, obviously, nurses do not have to grow in this direction either, as people with years of practical experience prove every time they pass the Nclex-rn.

I think the best benefit of trying to apply all these test taking strategies during the test is that this forces you to slow down, think things through and you'll wind up using your time more productively than you would have just operating on autopilot. Anything that can help you do that, can't be bad. At the end of the day, though, I believe that a lot of the strategies are very imperfect or only apply to the perfect questions, which somehow the example questions used to demonstrate the strategies always are. :chuckle So, I say, learn all the strategies you can and use them to the extent that you can on the test, but don't be shocked into a state of paralysis or anxiety when during the test your strategies don't apply perfectly. You are right. One can't just blindly apply these strategies. Ultimately, you have to judge if the answer the strategy leads you to makes any sense. And I agree that visualizing yourself in the clinical experience is helpful.

I'm not sure what you mean by incomplete questions and answers. Most of the practice questions I studied were pretty long. Most of the questions I got on the exam surprisingly were VERY short. Not all, but most. As far as there always being two incorrect answers, I don't know about that. There were at least a few questions that I couldn't eliminate any of them very easily. Yikes! But, that may have been reflective of my lack of a grasp on some of the content. One thing that the ATI has got going for it is lots of these "Nurse knows client needs further teaching (or client understands teaching) when client says A, B, C, or D or nurse would question which order, a, b, c, d. Those kinds of questions were all but ubiquitous on on the Nclex and I recognized the format from the ATI. I'll give the ATI that. I've heard others disagree, but the ATI predictor, IMO, captures the basic gist of the exam pretty well in terms of question format, the length of questions, a focus on safety, and the randomness of the questions if not the specific content. Aside from the fact that it isn't a CAT, the ATI does have the "feeling" of the Nclex. Which probably explains why I HATED the ATI. lol.

Someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but I doubt they'll have you counting those damn little boxes to determine intervals or whatever. I seriously doubt they are going to ask you to identify heart block either. If they ever do, I would bet 10 to 1 that it is only complete heart block, so know that. First degree, second, etc, you'll be tested on that if you ever get certified for EKG. If you know the rest of the basic rhythms I think you'll do fine. If you need to know anything about a wide bizarre QRS, it is probably just that these are found in PVCs or Vtach and that they represent an ectopic beat. i.e. a beat that starts in the wrong place in the heart - that is, not the SA node. That's why it gets so wide, because the electrical impulse is traveling through a wacky winding abnormal path. As far as P waves, I think you'll be fine knowing that they are absent in Afib and such. St elevations. Peaked Ts or inversions. Other than refreshing up on basics like this, I wouldn't spend too much time on EKG, if any time at all.

Thanks!

Hang in there. I walked out of Pearson on Monday and the first thing I said to the first person I talked to was, "If they give me a license, they are CRAZY!" :chuckle I really couldn't have felt any worse about it. Same thing as you guys. Tons of meds I didn't recognize. I had no idea that chicken pox was airborne. I had no idea what Orthodox Jewish familys' rituals are. I'm supposed to figure out which pts I should room together, but wait, how can I do that when I don't even know what half the listed diseases are? Holy moley. I spent the last two days waiting for the results scouring the web for information in preparation for my retake. False Alarm. Shut off at 75 and passed.