take whatever you can get as it is experience. Waiting for the perfect job and getting zero experience you lose opportunities. Alot of times your first job becomes your speciality because the longer you're in it the more you know and the harder it is to move. BUT blame it on economy there's alot of qualifyed nurses who are unemployed so employers can be picky. Ideally we would all have 2-3 yrs of medsurg floor exp before going into a specialty or community heath clinic. You learn on the job well good luck.
What do you think are pros and cons? if possible work for a facility that has a hospital affiliation and vice versa once you are in the system can move around.
HOSPITAL: 24 hrs 7 days a week, you as new person would get the worst hours and perhaps not even get full time status but perdiem, they call you when they need you.
Pts are sicker and weaker so you need to do more physical labor, pt are more acute and unstable so need more care, pt are in and out you never see them again. reactive care you see them only on acute episodes of unmanaged diseases. skills: depends on specialty . school prepares us for floor nursing, so those are the basics.
CLINIC -- hours M-F 9-5 almost, day hours, no holidays, no weekends, pts are healthiery so can walk, you have more continuous time with pt so can follow up on them, education, preventive care. you get to know your pts. skills its different .. you gain a different skillset but yes you lose the floor nursing type skills like foley, IV, wound care but again this depends on specialty. The word clinic can mean primary care, out patient surgery, cancer, GI etc clinic.
Don't think clinic work means its slow, boring and relaxing .. i am constantly running around, and ocassionally we do have situations that come up and hopefully never need to use bcls on anyone. I do wish i had the chance to get some medsurg exp first but this was the opportunity so yep. Good luck
