PolecatEZ

WIC, Planned Parenthood, and any local Community Health Centers are good choices for this. I'll be volunteering at all three as soon as my LPN license hurries up in the mail. CHC already has me on the list for their all-hands-on-deck immunization days which typically involve more kids than adults. Depending on state also, Planned Parenthood has much need for community health nurses for both clinical and travelling positions (about 30-40 open positions at all nursing levels) - cancer screenings, cervical biopsies and coloscopies, IUD placement, pregnancy testing, etc, and most patients have a string of kids following behind them just begging for their ear infections to be checked out and referred.

Medically complex could refer to patients that have more than X nursing diagnoses across multiple categories that still have independant functioning. You could probably pull out your nursing diagnosis textbook and pull random nursing diagnosis bullets and put them together for a sample patient, or even take a look at a chart that is already in your candidate pool if you have one. You may need to come up with your own criteria worksheet, detailing specific diagnosis and scoring for each to determine candidacy, with disqualifiers for disabilities that they would need to stay in long-term care to receive their proper standard of care. Hope that made sense.

Mr Patrick RN, allow me to enlighten you on why this policy is in place and unlikely to change. The basics: Most people wrong-headedly believe that the VA, as a whole, exists to aid and support veterans in disbursing their benefits to them and caring for them, etc, etc. The grand irony is that this organization exists to do the opposite. They exist due to the political expediency that benefits must be disbursed, but there needs to be an official gate-keeper for this endeavor. Which leads to the reason for this policy regarding veteran's preferance. They simply don't want the foxes guarding the henhouse. They want the foxes lined up with hat-in-hand outside the henhouse, and if they give them a few eggs at a time, many will just give up and go away. It saves Uncle Sam money in the red-headed stepchild department of our armed forces, freeing up funding for big shiny useless weapons programs. Basically, veterans might be too sympathetic and helpful to their brothers-in-arms, making them a poor choice in general for VA work. They weasel around this principle with the policy you listed above, and in nursing its much less impacted than their other departments, such as GI Bill benefit disbursement (good luck finding a vet there) or home loan approval, for example. The VA is ugly business in general, and makes necessary to this day veteran's advocacy groups such as the VFW and Legion. If the VA did not actually have this mission to deny benefits at every opportunity, including hiring preferance, these clubs would have no need to exist. Good luck on your mission, god speed.