SquishyRN

No, you're still associating hiring with training. The two are separate processes. There aren't "two cohorts being trained in the present moment". There are two cohorts worth of new grads still boarding in their respective departments waiting to be trained. They're not training yet, they're still waiting for the new grad program to start, but they're already working in the departments they were hired in. Hiring is done on a continuous rolling basis throughout the year. People can be hired at any time and have a start date at any time. New grad training is only done 2-3 times a year. I don't know the exact months, but for example's sake let's say April and October. Now let's say, again just for example's sake, 20 new grads are hired between January and April. When these new grads are hired, they already start working in their departments, they're not on "standby waiting to be hired". They're hired. They have a start date. They start working (boarding) in their departments while waiting to start the new grad program. I don't know how other departments do boarding, but in the ED the new grads that are boarding just do tasky things like blood draws and CNA stuff, they don't get patient assignments as if they were full fledged ER nurses since they haven't gone through the new grad program yet. They just board until the next new grad program starts. Now let's say the April new grad program only has 15 spots open, but there are 20 new grads boarding. The 15 that were hired first would start in the April cohort, and the last 5 would continue to board until the next program starts in October. They'd be the first in line to start in October, over whatever new grads get hired between May and October for the October cohort. "I would be surprised that they would continue to board new grads....” Those already boarding will get trained. The hiring freeze does not affect training because, again, hiring and training are separate, these people are already working in their departments, just not as full fledged nurses. The only reason they wouldn't get trained is if County goes beyond a hiring freeze and starts layoffs. They will be the first to go because County goes by seniority, and as new hires they will obviously have the least seniority. But County is not at that point yet. But since County has the hiring freeze, no new nurses are being hired and once these nurses that are currently boarding are trained, there won't be new grads behind them to get trained, so that's the point the new grad programs will stop.

Hiring and new grad training are completely separate. Even if new grads are no longer being hired at this time, that does not mean no new grads are being trained. Hiring is done on a rolling basis. There are 2-3 new grad programs run every year. Hired new grads are boarded in the departments they were hired in until the next cohort/program starts. So even if no new grads are hired moving forward because of the freeze, there are still quite a number of new grads that were previously hired that have already been working in their departments waiting their turn to start the new grad program. There is probably still 2 cohorts worth of new grads currently boarding, so that's 2 cohorts of new grad training that will happen whether more new grads get hired or not.

Nope. You don't have to reach out, they'll call. But again, you can also reach out to them if you want to be proactive. LA General's Nurse Recruitment e-mail is: [email protected] LA General's Nurse Recruitment phone number is: (323)409-4663 Harbor-UCLA's Nurse Recruitment e-mail is: [email protected] There's also Olive View. I don't have the e-mail or phone number, but you can easily just call the main hospital line and ask to be transferred to nurse recruitment.

If you're on the eligibility list, nurse recruitment from different County facilities will start contacting you. If you're feeling impatient, you can start calling nursing recruitment of the different County facilities and ask if they have any new grad openings that you can apply to. Just Google "Nursing Recruitment" or "Nurse Recruitment" along with the name of the specific County facility you're trying to find.

I forget if there are 2 or 3 new grad residencies a year right now, but their start dates have no bearing on your application since hiring is done on a rolling basis. Also, the entire hiring process for county takes MONTHS, so no, you don't have a chance in "quickly taking the exam" to be able to start anytime soon. For reference, I first applied to county in a July and didn't officially start until November. Promotions go through the same application and interview process so even those takes months. My second to last promotion I applied in a September and it didn't take effect until January. My last promotion I applied in May and it didn't take effect until August. The point is, if you literally only applied yesterday, don't expect to start any earlier than September. NillaWafers wrote a really good step by step of the hiring process in one of the earlier posts of this thread. Even years later, it's still pretty accurate and relevant. If you get hired, you board in the dept you were hired in until the next residency starts. If you're lucky and the next residency happens to start right away and there's space, then you start right away. But if you miss the start even by just a bit, or the next cohort is already full with the other new grads who have been boarding for months already, then you go into the next one. I'm not sure how they do boarding in other depts, but in the ER you'd typically get assigned to do tasky things like blood draws, etc. You don't start actually getting assigned booths and managing your own patients until you start the new grad program.

Literally NOTHING has changed about the application/interview process you described 2 years ago ? Everything you listed out step by step is still exactly how it works. Even promotions go through the same application and interview process, even if you're still in the same dept, so I've been through this rodeo 4 times already.

Not at LA Gen anymore, but I'm still with LA County. You'll learn a lot being at County, just take it all in one day at a time. Will you be starting in the ER?

Overtime is calculated on the hourly amount and, yes, gets added on top of the salary amount.

New grads would earn the lowest amount on the "Registered Nurse I" pay scale. Google "LA County Registered Nurse I" and click on the job description, not "Registered Nurse I/Relief Nurse" just the posting that doesn't include relief. It will show the pay range as “$7,677.56 - $11,492.30" per month. County employees are "salaried" (even hourly ones), so the new grad hourly rate gets calculated by taking $7677.56 divided by 174 hours per month, so $44.12 per hour. Except per the current union contract there will be a pay increase on October 1,2024 (just a little over a week from now), which will put the monthly at $8006.34, so $46.01 per hour.

What department are you interviewing for? The interviews are conducted by different departments and not specifically for a new grad program. If the department hires you and you happen to be a new grad, then you start a new grad residency.

General interview type questions like "Name a time you were faced an ethical dilemma and what did you do in response?” Things like that. Nothing clinical related like "What medication would you use for XYZ?” as far as I remember.

@NillaWafers, ASN wrote really good step by step instructions on getting hired at LA County on the first page of this thread. LA County is huge with multiple facilities and departments, so you can interview at any of them with openings once you're on the RN I eligibility list. LAC USC is the largest single facility within the County system that hires new grads, but Harbor UCLA, Olive View, and the clinics are options for new grads.

What's the pay rate at Huntington?

I’m glad I don’t feel this way alone. I’m burned out and beaten down. I feel guilty because my coworkers are in the same trenches but they’re still muddling through. The California Department of Public Health released their recommendations that healthcare workers that test positive for covid can still go to work if they are asymptomatic, if mild symptoms they only need to quarantine for 5 days, to alleviate the staffing shortages. We’re just bodies. They don’t care about us, and they don’t really care about the patients if this is the solution they came up with. These were already problems before the pandemic but the pandemic exacerbated it. I’m glad I got covid right before Christmas and was made to quarantine a full 10 days. But what kind of messed up situation is it that anyone can utter the words “I’m glad I got covid” with all seriousness. I’m on vacation that was already out on the schedule before this last surge started, so they couldn’t take it back. It makes me sad that I low key want someone in my group to get covid (just mild symptoms like I had) so we would be forced to quarantine abroad and I can’t be denied not coming to work because I can’t get back into the country. It makes me sad and ashamed to have these thoughts, but I’ve never hated going to work more ever in my life.

As an emergency room nurse I do all of those and more. Some shifts I only do some of those things, other shifts I could end up doing all of those things. Still not sure what kind of answer you're looking for though. If you wanted me to literally name every single rote task I do as an ER nurse to the level of detail as "starting IVs, collecting blood specimens, bathing patients, doing EKGs, inserting catheters, performing nasopharyngeal suctioning, performing endotracheal suctioning" etc, etc it would already be a book and still not encompass nearly everything I do because I still do way more than that. Every single day, every single hour could be different. There's no routine, I just roll with the punches. In a given day I could be searching the white pages for a patient's family members because they have dementia and were found wandering the streets and social work has gone home for the night, I could be holding up an iPad as a patient about to be intubated says what could be their last goodbyes because they don't know if they'll ever get well enough to get extubated, I could be pulling out an unconscious and pulseless patient out of a car and attempting my best at CPR while rushing them straight to the back, I could also be assigned to the back and be the one receiving said patient and immediately place pads on them so we can see their underlying rhythm and defibrillate if necessary, I could also be sitting doing nothing for 3 hours twiddling my thumbs at my triage desk at the entrance but can't leave to go anywhere or do anything else because it's an emergency room after all and I can't predict when a patient with a gunshot wound through their chest is going to walk through the door. So yeah, still not really sure what it is you're trying to ask since your questions still remain very vague. Even if you narrowed it down to "describe everything you do in a shift" it still wouldn't begin to describe what I do because literally every day is different. I think at this point the easier question to answer would be "As an ER nurse, what DON'T you do?"