HappyrockRN

The youngest patient I've taken care of was a few days past her 14th birthday...but we had a twelve-year old on the unit a few months ago who had been raped by her father. It was heartbreaking. I feel like we get an influx of 14- to 17-year olds during the month of June...it sort of makes me want to go to all the schools in our area and hand out condoms at their homecoming dances.

I work on an LDRP unit, and we all have to get our scrubs out of a machine and change at the beginning of the shift, and deposit them at the end of the shift (although some nurses who just do postpartum will wear their own scrubs in). The detergent that's used on ours is pretty harsh, too - and even within the same size, the scrubs will range from wrinkly bright blue elephant skin (new set) to faded pale blue sausage casing (old and shrunken set). We just changed our policy so that we aren't allowed to wear our own scrub caps anymore, either...very sad I do love not having to wash (or pay for!) my own scrubs, though. Plus the whole reduced rate of infections thing...that's nice too.

I just celebrated my first anniversary of being an LDRP nurse, and I essentially started there as a new grad (I oriented to critical care at a different hospital for a couple months, but then this job opportunity came up and I couldn't refuse it!). I didn't have any experience as a student nurse, but I still love going to work and am finally getting to the point where I'm consistently efficient and confident in my skills :) If you're working on nights, I would recommend doing as much of your orientation on nights as you can (apart from stuff in the OR, like everyone else said). At least on our unit, the night shift RNs and day shift RNs are as different as, well, you know :) The unit is just RUN differently - and if your main preceptor is working the same shift that you will be working once you're off orientation, you'll have at least one person you know you can count on if you get confused, overwhelmed, terrified, etc. I had the exact same thoughts running through my head last year - "What if I'm awful? What if I fail at my dream job? What if I hate it, and just wasted 4 years and thousands of dollars? What if I accidentally drop a baby?" [sorry if I just added some new concerns ] - but I don't think doing 3-5 years of med/surg will make you a better LDRP nurse in the long run.

I would talk to the manager of the unit that offered you a job and explain the situation - that you interviewed for multiple jobs and want to hear back from the others before you make your final decision. You don't have to say that the med-surg job is the one that you want the least, but trust me - most managers on floors like that are aware that new grads don't think of m/s as their "dream job." I know the market is tough right now, but that doesn't mean you have to settle for a job that will burn you out within a year, especially before you've heard back from your potential dream job.

I'm a new grad, and I'm in my second month of orientation for L&D in a very high-volume city hospital. I've had the same concerns as you about starting on nights and not having the resources that days do - if you work on nights and your patient has to go back to the OR, you scrub in - day shift has specific PACU and OR nurses, so if your patient goes back, you just become first admit. However, you should be fine as long as part of your orientation is devoted to OR, PACU, etc. If you started on days, it's not like you'd get that experience anyway...plus, night shift is so much more fun :)

Thank you all for your replies/support!! I have to admit, it was NOT what I was expecting to hear - everyone I've asked around me has told me to stay with my current unit for at least 6-12 months. However, none of them are nurses (the only nurses I see all the time are the ones I'm working with, and I'm not about to ask them!!) :) I've decided I'll definitely apply for the L&D job - if I don't get it, at least my preceptor is still working with the unit, so she'll still be around to give me a good recommendation. If I'm still on my current unit in 6 months, I'll qualify for transferring to L&D in my hospital system - and if I stay at the hospital I'm at right now, I'll be working with (I think) the largest group of midwives in the state. Either way, I've decided to quit stressing about it, as either outcome will be a great one - I might just have to wait a little longer for one of them :) And to tusconash: Future midwife hugs!!! :) I know how you feel about the whole going-back-to-school-immediately thing - all through nursing school I had planned on going straight to grad school, until about the middle of my 7th semester when I realized that there was no way I'd be able to pay for grad school (or things like rent and food) without getting rid of my current debt. And it's really hard when there are no jobs in your specialty, so you feel like the experience you ARE getting isn't even relevant...sigh If you can afford grad school right now, then go for it!!! However (and this advice is completely unsolicited, so you can feel free to ignore it), have you thought about taking your 'core 3' courses at a college near you (or maybe online?) while you work, and then transferring to the school you want to go to once you've finished those? That way you could be actively on your way to your midwifery career, but you wouldn't feel guilty about leaving your current unit.

Hi everyone, I want to preface this post by saying that I know I will probably come across as incredibly ungrateful, particularly in the current job market...trust me, I wouldn't be posting this if I wasn't incredibly conflicted. And I apologize for rambling...I tend to do that when I'm really stressed out First, some background information: I graduated with my BSN last December, and took/passed the N-CLEX in February. The specialty I've always been enamored with is women's health (mainly L&D, but I love general gynecology as well) - I really want to go to grad school as soon as possible so I can complete my master's and become a nurse-midwife. In addition to my OB rotation, I did my management and capstone clinicals on labor and delivery units. Of course, I know L&D positions are incredibly hard to come by, especially for new grads - most of the hospitals around me who had OB positions posted would write "NEW GRADS WILL NOT BE CONSIDERED FOR THIS POSITION!!!!" (seriously, all caps/exclamation points and everything...talk about discouraging!). Since I knew going straight to grad school wasn't a choice (at least, not if I wanted to be able to afford rent/food while in school!), I applied on units that were hiring new grads (you know, all two of them...sorry, I told you I ramble). The situation: I was incredibly lucky, and after a month of hearing absolutely nothing (I count those "we appreciate your interest but have chosen someone with more experience for the position" e-mails in the "nothing" category), I landed an interview - and got an offer! It's not related to OB at all, but it still sounded like an amazing opportunity: it's for the first PCU at a major downtown hospital, and the unit will be opening in a couple months. So, not only can I pay rent now (hooray!), but I'll have the chance to be part of the birth of a unit, which seems to be an incredibly rare and exciting thing to be a part of. I accepted the job, and started orientation the week after - I'm now on week 2. The thing that makes me at night: So, a few days ago, my capstone instructor called to let me know that she will be leaving her position as an RN to become the L&D clinical instructor at her hospital...and she wants to make sure I apply for her position, because the manager will be posting it soon. I told her I had already accepted a position and was on orientation, and would feel awful leaving a job after only a few weeks/months, but she just kept telling me she would let me know when it was posted. If she had just been telling me that another nurse quit and a position would be open, I could easily let it go and stay where I am - but seriously. She is trying to make sure that I get HER position - what an incredible honor to have your mentor recommend you for her own job! In addition: now that I'm on orientation, I'm finding out a little more about the patient population of our unit, and it turns out the nurse recruiter didn't quite know what she was talking about. She made it sound like we would be getting the patients that were stable enough to get out of critical care, but too complex for med-surg - and now it sounds like most of our patients will be either bariatric or going through withdrawal. The conflicting voices that I can't get out of my head: I have no idea what to do - I keep going over the pros and cons of both in my head. On the one hand, I know how disrespectful it would be to leave my position for another one; I would be wasting all of the money they have put into my hiring/training process, and I'm not even on the unit yet. It would also be really unfair to the manager who's trying to put together a unit (and I guess other new grads, but honestly, most of us who have been hired on the unit ARE new grads and she wants to hire plenty more). Also, the hospital I'm at right now is a HUGE health system in my state, and they're getting even bigger - I don't want to be "blacklisted" from the organization, particularly because they own most of the hospitals in the state that employ nurse-midwives. Finally, even though my benefits are kind of crappy at my current hospital, the L&D job would be at a county hospital that mostly serves the local immigrant population and those on Medicaid - which is actually the population I prefer, but I've been told the insurance they offer is pretty bad. But on the other hand...nursing dream job aside, I never saw myself staying on this unit for that long anyway. I told myself I would stay at least a year, but now I keep wondering if that would be an even bigger slap in the face to them: they spend $60,000+ to train me, and I leave before 2013? Also, I really DO want to go to grad school in the near future - I turn 23 next week, and unless I love L&D nursing so much that I truly can't bring myself to leave it (even to further my education), I would really like to be a practicing CNM before I'm 30. I need as much experience as I can get. And crappy insurance, a probable pay cut, and worse working conditions aside...I would be doing the specialty I'm passionate about, the thing that got me into nursing in the first place! I asked my preceptor about working there per diem on the weekends, but she said they always hire really experienced people for those positions (which makes sense...it's hard to become an expert when you're just moonlighting a few times a month). I could just wait a year and then look for other L&D positions, but everything I see requires 1-2 years of "recent experience in the specialty" - which makes it impossible to GET any experience in the specialty (I don't think being present for the "birth of a unit" counts as L&D experience!). Also, it's worth mentioning that I'm freaking out so much about whether I should even bother APPLYING for the L&D position - I don't want to offend my preceptor (and L&D contact/reference) by not applying, but I don't want to have my manager find out, lose my current job, and then not get hired at the other job, either. So, that's it - if you actually read through the whole post, I commend you What would you do if you were in this position? Seasoned nurses - do you have any advice? Thanks, Nursing Noob