erinadance

That's right, roxiroxmysox. A working interview, at least in my case, was that you go in dressed in scrubs, stay for 3-4 hours during the intensive nursing part of the day. For example, when I did adult medical day care, I started out when 10 am meds were administered, learned about their way of charting, where supplies were, how paperwork was filled in and how workflow systems were handled. It is like a training day. You get a chance to see how they operate and if it's for you, and they also get that same chance. I believe hospitals bring you in for the staff to interview you as a second interview, and some do shadow days as a type of working interview.

I want to leave a little update. I found several local jobs at Adult Medical Daycares, LTC facilities, and doctor's offices that are advertising on online classifieds. I applied, interviewed, received second interviews and working interviews. After your initial interview, remember to write them back thanking them and offer to come in for a working interview. This is like offering them a few hours of your time for free. They love that, and I had offers from everyone after all of my second interviews. I will add that the one place I really preferred, I popped a written thank you into the mail immediately. I was overwhelmed with finally having some interest and being able to choose from multiple offers. I chose the one that I loved the most, and I start this week! I hope that this information is helpful to someone. I think information can be empowering, even if the message is initially negative. Good luck to you all as nursing students and future RN's!!

You are welcome caramela! I'm sure you will make a good decision about everything. Good luck on finishing school and finding work; it is really good that you are keeping the end goal in mind. Sometimes school gets so hectic, it's easy to forget all this effort is about finding a new career and landing the job!

Dear Caramela, I was an SI leader for two years at my school. I would agree a little bit with estrellaCR, in that it is more important to have hands on care with patients for marketing yourself for a first job. That being said, you do have a leg up in that you were proactive in your studies, and that may make you marketable NOW to floor managers. I was called an SI Leader, my supervisor gave me a beautiful letter of recommendation that counts as an employment recommendation, and this shows you take initiative and have leadership skills. I would begin to network with other nurses, make it clear to floor managers that you want to work there, and get fantastic recommendation letters from clinical instructors every semester. Additionally, we had many paramedics that were in our program to get the RN, and they all had no problems finding jobs in ER's. ED was not for me, but for paramedics, they might be action junkies or used to the pace. Perhaps you might look into paramedic training/volunteering instead of the SI lead job. I hope this helps! (I graduated in '13 in Maryland). Good luck with your decision!

Thank you jrtaylor4 for the comment regarding talking openly about mistakes. If we, as medical professionals, can share our mistakes it can lead to collaboration and solutions to fixing the problems. Brian Goldman did a TED talk about this issue among doctors, and I found it encouraging and enlightening. It was 19 minutes well spent watching it. You can see it on Youtube or TED dot com.

I have to tell you that it is very competitive out there, and the hiring officers at the hospitals are holding their breath right now. I have an ASN in Maryland from a good Community College. I graduated with high honors, had great references and NO experience in the nursing field beyond a small stint as a MA at a University medical office. I am still looking for work a year after graduation! I will say that I did not start looking until after I passed boards in early fall. I would love to pass on some information I have acquired along the way. I can't stress this enough: WORK IN THE MEDICAL FIELD DURING NURSING SCHOOL! If you want to work in a hospital, you had better be there before graduation. I would also stress that you need to network with teachers, other nurses, and friends from school. It is so competitive now that hospitals may throw your resume in the trash if you are competing with BSN new grads. Know where you want to continue your education before you complete your last semester of your ASN. Apply there and get the ball rolling for your BSN. I am not entirely convinced that it's better to get your BSN from a brick and mortar school versus an online RN to BSN. However, this could just become another avenue for recruiters to be discriminatory. The recruiters want to push for Magnet (so only BSN nurses need apply), and with the Affordable Health Care Act, hospitals are holding their breath to see how the money is going to shake out from all of the changes. I know there is a strong push towards ambulatory care, and it is much cheaper to employ medical assistants in doctor's offices than it is to utilize RN's. My school program didn't really warn us of this problem, and advise us what to do. I ended up really doing well in school, but now I am paying the price for not working during that journey. I hope this helps.

Did the original question get answered?

When we did our "group" project for Psyc, I was with two other students working with a diverse patient group, set in the milieu. We did a project on sports/exercise, but any topic having to do with your patients works. We started with an ice breaker passing the ball around and introducing ourselves. We did sports charades, but the patients were wayyy too good at it, (i.e. they were a little bored.) We did some yoga, some deep breathing, and some exercise "simon says". The patients really liked their experience in our group and the staff said it was nice to see the patients laughing and having fun. We didn't know what to expect; we had only been in clinical at the mental hospital for three days! Our "group" was 45 minutes long, and we had to ad lib some to get through the time. I would suggest making it fun, and trying to keep them as involved as possible. Our population had seen many students doing these groups, so they know a little of what to expect. That is not really important, but remember that many of your patients are very intelligent. Don't dumb down anything. Also, some patients may not participate, but they are listening, and might join later. Don't worry about that, it is their illness and your instructor knows it. I am writing this b/c I was looking here for ideas and didn't see many. Good luck!