DamailaRN

I wish there were a chat/IM option on this thing, I'd love to talk to you real-time because there is so much that you wrote that resonates with me - change some details and I could have written a lot of what you did back in the day. I'm on the other end. After graduating top of my 4-year nursing class and working as a nurse for 1.5 years, I hate most of it. Yeah there are perks, but my heart isn't in it, and in many ways I think I picked the wrong field, but now I'm trapped because nothing else I do can pay my loans and support my family until my husband finishes his degree and gets going in his field. I have no doubts that you can do the coursework, I was a great student and despite the challenging times I got all A's in my program. It's not a matter of can you do it, but a question of whether your heart is in it, and from the sounds of it, it isn't. Don't sell yourself short.

"Lady, I didn't invent the call light, I just manufacture them!"

Kinda late for the new grad program this season, but try contacting the nursing recruiter at Presbyterian / St. Luke's - he's one of the best I've encountered for replies.

Yeah, email Rob Safford, I've been very impressed with him. I work on a med/surg floor. You're welcome :)

FancyPants, do you mind if I ask where you work? Did you mean NSMC? What unit?

I would think your experience as a surgical tech could be very helpful, especially if you have 6 years in hearts already, but I'm not sure how likely they are to hire a new grad from outside the hospital for the OR program. I believe they generally like to recruit internally, though I can't say that for fact. I am already an employee and was interested in the surgical program and was told you have to go through the PeriOp program (believe it is 8 months long and requires a contract, not positive on that latter part). Once you are finished with the program, you are guaranteed a position in an OR somewhere - either day surgery, main OR, or the RMHC OR - I don't know how much say you get in where you are placed, though I would think your preference would certainly be taken into consideration. You might start by contacting the nurse recruiter at P/SL - his name is Rob Safford, his email is on their webpage, and as far as nurse recruiters go, I would say he is among the very best at providing a speedy response. If nothing else, he may be able to provide you with the name and email of the OR educator to direct your questions to. As for the hospital itself, I personally feel it is a very good one. I really like my coworkers, and I feel like they try to keep their employees happy where they can. It is a specialty hospital, and while I haven't worked at a lot of others in the area for comparison, I think a large volume of very acute care patients come through. The portion of the hospital that specializes in peds is called The Rocky Mountain Hospital for Children, and it's more of a separate wing, but I think the job posting fall under P/SL on the website. Hope that helps. Best wishes! :)

While on one hand I am relieved to see that I'm not the only one having these feelings, on the other, sometimes I wish I'd stumbled across this board (especially this section) before I ever started with nursing. I'm a couple weeks away from my one-year anniversary at my hospital. I feel guilty for being so unhappy, because I know the economy is awful and I am very lucky to have a good-paying full-time job. I try to keep that in mind, but it doesn't do much for the dread and anxiety I feel leading up to my shifts (or throughout them). I spend a lot of time thinking about what ELSE I could be doing, and I've used that same word - "trapped" - so many times myself. I work night shift on a med/surg unit. I think a great deal of the problem is the night shift itself, and I'm trying really hard to find something on days that I can handle. Ten months of night shift has wreaked havoc on me and my family. Even when I am off, I can't enjoy my personal time because it takes me most of my days off to get back in a "normal" groove (and then it's time to flip again), and I spend a good deal of that time fretting over work and looking for a new job. I'm also not sure I like the actual nursing part, but I keep trying to talk myself into hanging in there and giving a different job a chance. My unit is very busy, even on nights, but then I look at day shift, and see that they are even busier, and it scares the crap out of me. I feel so slow, even after all this time I still have days where I don't clock out until 9 or 10 AM. I am so very frustrated, unhappy, and disappointed. Some days I think this whole path was one big mistake.

I'm at P/SL in Denver.

Maybe it depends on which area/hospital? My hospital is also HealthONE and I started at more than that as a new grad nurse, though I have CNA/Nurse Tech experience. I am also assuming by your screen name and raise amount that you aren't yet working as an RN. When we had our reviews we were told that due to the economy everyone was getting something like a 1% raise across the board, but thankfully that was still a lot more than 8 cents (I don't mean that as a dig, I just want to be fair and clarify whether that was 8 cents on a nurse's wage). I haven't worked for any other hospital so can't speak from personal experience, but I have spoken to other nurses in other hospitals and was told that HealthONE pays better than Centura and that the UCH doesn't pay as well as other hospitals but has a great New Grad Residency Program. I've also heard that the southern Colorado hospitals (Colorado Springs and down) don't pay as well as the northern/Denver-area ones. I've heard in general that most hospitals start inexperienced new grads around $22/hr around here. But unless all the new grads want to come together and declare their system and starting wage it's all still hearsay

I work nights on a Med/Surg floor at a big hospital in Denver. Our unit is very fast-paced and can be higher-acuity so they have been trying to get the ratios down to more like 1 nurse to 4 patients on days and 1:4-5 on nights, though there have been times when a nurse needed to take 6 (thankfully very infrequent times). I would guess with your experience that you would start in the $24-25/hr range for regular full-time employment, but can't say for sure, and it would depend on the system, as nurse2033 said. I've heard HCA/HealthONE (for-profit) is among the higher-paying, though Centura (non-profit) has more hospitals overall around Colorado. There are some others - Kindred, Denver Health, VA, etc. - but I don't really know how those compare. Good luck!

I'd say SummitAP is giving very sound advice - competitive is an understatement. I am a Colorado native who moved to Kansas for my BSN then returned immediately following graduation in May 2010. My husband was able to transfer in his retail job but the wages were not nearly enough to support our family of three, so we found ourselves moving into the lower half of my mother's home to await my new employment. I was initially quite confident and thought it would be VERY temporary. I have always had excellent grades, graduated summa cum laude in my nursing program, have done well in other job interviews, and had experience in other capacities working in hospitals (nurse tech), home care (CNA), assisted living (resident staff), and customer-service type jobs (receptionist, retail). I'd heard things were tough but figured I'd be a shoe-in. Over 75 applications (+ many more resumes) and 5 unemployed months later I was feeling pretty humbled. Out of all of that, I only landed 3 interviews, and other new grads were telling me I was pretty lucky to have that many. The recruiter at one of my interviews informed me that they'd had over 200 applicants to their new-grad program, and I was one of 16 selected to actually interview (I think it was for 2-6 positions, don't remember). I had two hospitals I really wanted to work at, and that was one of them. I got a 2nd interview with the panel but didn't get the job. My other first-pick hospital never even called me for an interview. I really wanted to do this on my own, but the job I finally ended up with? The one where I knew someone. They started the ball rolling by taking my resume to the unit manager and talking me up. The "interview" ended up being a fairly informal chat with the unit manager. My third interview was for the University of Colorado Nurse Residency Program (I think they end up with around 500 applicants, don't know for sure), and I actually ended up withdrawing/never went because the other hospital offered me a job and I was too afraid to pass it up in case the Residency Program didn't take me. :sstrs: Side-note: Once I had my job we went house-hunting and fell in love with a short-sale. By the time that whole process was done we had been living in my mom's basement for approx. 10 months and I was driving an hour one-way to work. I've now been on night-shift ("paying my dues," as I've been told) for 11 months (cannot wait to make the move to days!) and still commute more than 45 mins to work. One thing you may find encouraging: it seems to me that many, maybe even most, of the newer nurses on my unit seem to have come from out-of-state nursing schools. Not sure why that is, but I don't think being out of state is necessarily a deterrent, but certainly can't speak for other places either. So it's not impossible, but be prepared for it to be very challenging, and try to think of creative ways to network and get your resume seen. Good luck to you!

Thanks for your response, klone, good to know!

Just wondering if anyone here works for PSA Healthcare or Bayada Nurses or has heard anything about working for either in the Colorado region? What do/don't you like? Any idea what the pay range is? Thanks in advance!

My brother was a patient there a couple years ago and raves about it. I don't know a whole lot about the job situation there, but I have also heard that it's competitive and a great place to work with low nursing staff turnover. It is a very well-known hospital, supposedly one of the best for what they do. Good luck!

I'd have to second Mi Vida Loca on the grim new grad job situation here. I am originally from Colorado but went out of state for my nursing degree. I graduated summa cum laude / at the top of my class at the beginning of May and moved back to Colorado at the end of May. I had more than 75 job applications out there before I landed my first of only three interviews. At one of the interviews, the recruiter told me that they had selected 16 of us to interview out of more than 200 applicants. Unfortunately, I didn't get the job. I was very blessed to finally start working in October, but feel it had less to do with my academic success and far more to do with my connections. So as far as job availability, not a whole lot if you are a new grad/have no experience (it's bad enough that I know some places are encouraging the new grads to go for CNA / Nurse Tech positions) and salary in the hospitals for new RN's starts around $22/hr from what I've heard. The two major hospital systems out here are Centura and HealthONE. If you look at enough job postings you'll start to notice a trend - most of them are stamped with "Not Hiring New Grads" and/or "Minimum of 2 Years Experience Required." I hope that helps - good luck!