Poet74

I am sad that I keep hearing the same things over and over again from hospice nurses. My company is the same…case loads in the upper 20's….by the time the new hire gets trained a seasoned one quits. Or the new realizes that you can't make any connection at all when you see 6 people with 30 minutes of driving between each, 30 minutes of charting..plus whatever is wrong. Complex dressing changes, pleurex, pumps and whatever else you can think of. Doctor's that may take 45 minutes to call you back but you can't leave the bedside always and circle back around….(mine always call me back when I am doing 70mph on the highway…usually while they are doing 70mph in the other direction between the 6 people they are seeing) Oh, another big use of our time that management doesn't know how to put on a spread sheet….time spent talking to patients and families…There are days you go into a families homes and the clients and families just want someone to talk to…not about the disease or treatments….just a GD human connection for 10 minutes because so many of these families all the do is eat, sleep and breath the death of someone they love. You may be the 79 year old woman who takes care of her demented husbands only rationale conversation for a few days while she is with him day and night. Well hell, I rewrote that a few times and that is the tame version of that paragraph…..I'm thinking I might be getting burned…I have been seriously looking at new careers (outside of nursing, same BS everywhere)….

Wow……I was a weekend RN for a hospice (census roughly 160) for some time. I worked 8 hour shifts on Friday and Monday to help the team nurses with overflow and did 12 hour shifts on sat/sun. On the weekend I would visit any continuous care cases, do the first/initial assessment on any admissions, visit anybody that the team felt needed to be checked on over the weekend and help out however was needed. Some weekends that was up to 10 visits, some it was 4. I did have backup but that was one of the case managers who did the Monday-Friday gig. We also had our triage line and triage nurses. The triage nurse took emergency calls and answered those…..however if they got busy I would be their back-up. No I didn't have to do admits, we had dedicated admit nurses. We cover a fairly large geographic area. 100+ miles days were common. 212 was my record. Management never factors in the fact that it may be a 45 minute drive between 2 cases or that home patients rarely want to be seen at 7pm unless there is a problem!

Also note with LTC, it has become a meat grinder. For the first time in a great number of years they are getting a glut of RN’s coming to them looking for jobs and they are taking advantage of it. The will hire up all they can find, throw you on the floor with very little support and training and leave you to sink or swim. If you make it fine, if you don’t make it quickly you are gone. They don’t care about you, there are 20 more behind you. To be honest they are not all like this. The good ones usually aren’t. Ask yourself this question when you interview at a LTC facilility: Would I put my mother/father/husband/wife in here? IF the answer is no then don’t work there. Ask yourself that question again after your first week.

Remember, when schools base their decisions on your pre-reqs and not overall gpa they expect more. Also, what their minimum posted and the true minimum is subjective. At Florida Gulf Coast they state their min is a 2.5, but if you have less than a 3.3 don't even bother.

LTC is a viable option for a new grad; however, I don’t know where these other nurses work but my experience with LTC nurses has been very different.I don’t know your education but I found a great number of the older LPN’s and ADN’s gave me a hard time because I have a BSN. They immiedeietly assumed I was there to “tell them how to do things”. Also, god forbid you find the doing something dangerous/stupid and try to point it out! I made enemies with a bunch of them because I (politely) pointed out that they should maybe wear gloves during a procedure. I got the “I have been doing this since we had to wash our gloves blah blah blah” speech. LTC also gives you 0 learning curve. I remember the first facility I worked at PRN gave me 3 days of training and then gave me almost 60 patients and 2 carts of meds with no support. I had a question about a procedure at 2am and no one would give me advice (first job as a nurse). I ended up having to call my mother (she used to run the facility). I moved from south Florida to Washington state and started at another facility that offered me a weeks training to orient me to all wings of the facility. The first day the nurse training me was on the second half of a double and had never worked the floor unit we were on. The second day the nurse to orient me called off so they just put me on the floor and told me to “wing it”. Now I do assisted living. All I do is quarterly assessments and supervise their RN delegation program. It is the easiest nursing job you will ever find. I am salaried but I only ever get stuck doing extra when state is looming. I get lunch on time everyday

I graduated in may 2009 and all I have been able to find is LTC. Most of the recruiters I speak to in hospitals will only say "LTC exp is better than nothing". That is the only reason I stick with LTC instead of going and working at a fast food place. I just can't stand the attitude LTC has developed since the economy has gotten bad. They hire new or recent grads like crazy, give the zero training orientation then send the off to sink or swim. It seems most don't give a damn about you or your license.

LOL, I have applied to anything that has the word nurse attached to it (well, maybe not wet-nurse).

Teaching might be worth looking into. I need to find something...If I keep working were I am I am going to burnt out by the end of the year.

Never had a 50 page paper but I did have a couple that neared the 30 mark.

I received my BSN in May of 2009 from Florida Gulf Coast University. All I have been able to find is LTC jobs and to be honest I can't stand LTC. Don't get me wrong, it isn't the residents I dislike. I simply find it horribly depressing. Honestly, I spend half the night grinding my teeth cringing before work (some of that may be my current employer). So here is my question: Given my BSN what else am I qualified to do? Most places won't hire me because they KNOW I am looking for something else. Both Wal-Mart and a fast food place (was desperate for money) turned me down because they didn't want to invest in somebody who was going to run at the first nursing job they found. Truthfully I can't blame them. I am starting to really regret my decision. I went to nursing school because I enjoy nursing and to take care of my family. So far all it has accomplished is limiting my job prospects and put my family deeper in debt. I have applied all over the country for positions and I am lucky if I even get 1 phone call per 75-100 applications I put in. Thanks in advance.

This seems to be the tren in LTC. With the economical crunch they have more applicants than ever. With this glut they hire every new grad or passer by, throw them to the wolves on some impossible shift and just hope you don't get the sued. The management doesn't care, all they are worried about is budget. If you mess up, they will pin it on you and take the next application from the pile. I just hired as a nurse at a local LTC facility. Due to my credentials they tasked me with solving their med error problem which they blamed on the med techs. Well I did my job, found the problems and told them. When I told them it was a staffing problem I was told "Our staffing hours are pssed down from corporate office based on resident diagnosis occupancy. Corporate and I are unwilling to add more hours to solve this problem."

Were are you that they are turning away people with your expirience for new grad BSN's? In Florida or Washington state I can't even get in the door with my BSN and no acute care history.