Concerto_in_C

I know somebody who got kicked out of nursing school, waited couple years and was admitted to a new school. So in the grand scheme of things, your misfortune is not fatal. The real question is do you want to be in this profession? This is one of those events that happens to test your resolve to be a nurse. It didn't happen because people hate you. It's just a test and it's not the end. I don't like being a nurse. It's degrading and it destroys my self-esteem. So even though I never got kicked out of the program, maybe I should have been. It would have been a favor and a blessing. Sometimes God throws a wrench in your sprockets because he has your back and he wants to steer you towards a different career that will be more fulfilling.

It's a sexist industry that believes men should work in critical care or ER. Or they believe men should be nurse anesthetists and stuff like that. So if you are trauma helicopter nurse or a critical care nurse they will like you because that fits their expectations. But in lower acuity settings you will have a lot of competition and you will meet managers who don't always like men on the floor. I've never worked in critical care so I fail most interviews. For last 3 years I've survived thanks to contracts. Contract agencies will always hire you because travel agency jobs are worthless. They pay a good hourly rate but that's the least important thing when you are looking at the whole compensation package.

Travel agencies are only interested in quick profit and they have no interest in you as a professional and they have no interest in helping you develop your career as part of the organization. Some travel agencies have engaged in Medicare and Medicaid fraud. There have been convictions and hefty fines. Travel agencies pay higher hourly wage than staff positions. This can be useful at various points in your life, but I think in the long run you lose, you miss out an growth opportunities. There are perks and benefits of working full time for a reputable company that offer you as much, if not more, value than the hourly rate. Generally speaking, the best companies to work (in any industry) are great because they create a climate that helps you develop to your fullest potential, something agencies couldn't care less about. That's why everybody wants to work for a Fortune 100 company or Fortune 500 company. Nobody wants to work for Johnie Doe's Travel Agency. But if you have the choice between running out of money or taking a travel assignment, then you should grab the contract because it will give you time to think and plan and organize your next career move.

I've stayed at one hospital for 9 months but this is unusual. 3 months is typical. I've met a nurse who's had the same travel assignment for 2.5 years. This is probably a record.

I think you have unrealistic expectations as a new nurse. You are operating in an environment where it's normal for a floor nurse to have 20 years of experience. I've been a nurse for 10 years but some of my fellow nurses have been on the floor since the early 1970s. This means they have 40+ of experience. I love them to death, they are your greatest asset. Look to them for guidance. You are too green to take on those people and impress them. Hang in there. I mean hang in there for 5 years and lets have this conversation again. When you have several years of experience try to specialize so you can get off the general hospital floor. You can specialize in anything you want--cath lab, midwife, IR radiology nurse inserting PICC lines, anything you want. On a general medical floor you will forever work with management that believes floor nurses are stupid. Stupid nurses who are a liability more than an asset. It's the sandbox mode where you learn the basics. I've been learning the basics for 10 years now and I still need more practice to improve.

I wish I was dismissed 12 years ago. I would have picked a better career. Sometimes an event like this is a gift.

Lower your expectations of your peers and employer. When your expectations are low, you will be like me. Every day will be a good day.

I've been getting signals similar to yours. Scarce jobs for APNs, but plentiful jobs for BSNs, so many nurses wonder if it's worth abandoning bedside BSN with a gazillion jobs out there and plenty of flexibility. They tell me that while the demand for FNP is lower, the demand for PAs (physician assistants) is very high. However, that's a different career path.

I'm getting spammed by countless colleges and universities offering Advanced Practice degrees, usually online. Typically this is a master's degree from some Saint Boniface Nursing College in some random state, or some other ridiculous sounding institution I've never heard of before. Generally, this is not a good sign. Educational opportunity spam usually means questionable career outcomes, leading to mediocre enrollment figures, hence they spend tons of money on advertising trying to get people to sign up with their program. What's really going on with the job market for APNs? Are people finding work? If they find work, are they finding work conditions, autonomy of practice, and compensation commensurate with their greater educational achievement, so they feel the extra 2-5 years in grad school was worth it?

They patronize us to make us feel better but in their eyes we are dudes who weren't manly enough to hack medical school. Hence the awkward naming rules.

LOL, you are the one who is a candidate for a new profession. Look at the anger in your reply. Thanks for your advice. I wish I made it past your first sentence but I lost interest.

Being male is not relevant to how your career will progress. What's relevant is this is a nasty industry to work in. You will be working with people who spent 30 years eating garbage, drinking alcohol, doing drugs. They smoke a pack of cigarettes before going to ER with shortness of breath. They will blame the nurse and the physician if they don't have good outcome after 3 days of frantic therapy at the hospital--after they had spent 30 years destroying their health. This is akin to drivers blaming Ford Corporation because their driving sucks. Very ungrateful industry to work in and the worst customers in the world. Like anything new it gets you excited because it's new, but veteran nurses have the lowest career satisfaction scores in the world. I thrive in nursing because I have very low expectations of my employers. Because I have low expectations, I'm never disappointed.

The only evident shortage I've seen is for temp nursing jobs offered by agencies. The agencies are spamming the web with millions of job ads. This is presumably because they charge the hospitals over $100/hr but pay you only $40+. When I apply for a full time job with benefits generally i don't get called. I have 9 years of experience and my resume is strong. Working with temp agencies is not for everybody. They can be quite predatory. Some nurses love them others can't stand them. I have been successful working with agencies my standard of living went up because money is good plus you are never bored. Keep in mind even if you are the best nurse in town there are millions others who have your skills plus they are flooding the market with foreign nurses educated overseas. If you want a smoking hot resume you must go to grad school. There is no escaping this in the end...

I'd like to get started on a FNP program but don't know where to begin. A lot of schools competing for attention.

Nurse managers are among the reasons I quit full time nursing and became a contract nurse. I don't have manager anymore, I have an agent who kisses my butt because of the revenue I bring her. I'm no longer an employee but a businessman. I dislike hospital leadership. When something goes wrong with a patient they throw young promising nurses under the bus and report them to state boards to protect hospital revenue. The legal department at the hospital is there to protect the hospital, not the nurse that's just getting started in the profession. The nurse manager is part of this hostile administration. She is not one of us. She is not in the trenches with us sharing the hardships. Once I became a contract nurse the hospitals and their leadership can kiss my butt. They have no jurisdiction over me. They can't make any move against my license. My agency's lawyers work for me, not for the hospital, and they made it clear when I was in a contract in September and things went sour. The only way my agency turns against me and reports me to nursing boards is a criminal case like diverting narcotics or assault or sexual harassment. They will never stab me in the back because a patient had a bad outcome. Some patients will always have bad outcomes no matter what we do and don't do. The spend a lifetime ruining their health through their bad habits, bad diet, lack of exercise, they smoke a pack of cigarettes before going to ER, and they expect the physician and the nurse to fix them in 3 days. And woe on us nurses if we don't deliver a satisfactory outcome!!

Nurses are not stupid, on the contrary, very clever. However, I think nurses are boring. I've never socialized with nurses. When I make small talk I prefer to chat with physicians because they have something interesting to say. They have knowledge of topics beyond just working at the hospital. For instance, some physicians travel around the world and share their travel stories with me. Some physicians are photographers in their spare time and they show me the pictures. Other physicians play in a rock band. Nurses seem to be intellectually disinterested in the world, even if they are terrific nurse clinicians. Booooooring....

Everybody is high risk in this paranoid industry, which explains why nurses are leaving en masse to pursue careers in real estate and other industries where they can feel appreciated for the first time in their lives.

If that is so then explain how come California nurses are the only ones who went on strike even though their state is the only one with staffing ratios that are guaranteed by law. Clearly that didn't help their miserable careers.

Lack of appreciation, lack of respect, clients who treat us like household servants but they are incapable of saying thank you. Hostile, abusive work climate. You never get credit for the million of things you did right, but the lynch mob is ready to pounce on you as soon as you make a single mistake. This is not just one job that pissed me off, this is my impression of the industry after 9 years of nursing. Statistically nurses have one of the lowest career satisfaction scores in the world, there is data out there to support this assertion because they do those satisfaction surveys regularly for various professions. I'm researching the paralegal option, it takes 2 years to become a paralegal, I'm talking to some lawyers to get their industry input. If I could become a legal nurse so I could defend nurses against abuse and litigation from this abusive industry, it would give me a renewed sense of purpose because I believe that nurses are the good guys in a hostile system. And if the nurses are mistreated and unsubstantiated accusations are made against them then somebody must stand up for them and hold the employers accountable. The travel agency I work for has such a legal team made of nurses and lawyers. Those guys are very busy. A legal nurse in a top legal team makes up to $150/hr. Good luck with your career and I appreciate you asking about my feelings tactfuly without flaming me on sight.

Academics can be tough but if academics were easy two things would have happened: 1) The industry would be flooded with people who just want a job (not profession) 2) With the industry flooded with candidates, nurses would be making $10/hr because holding a nursing license would zero prestige Nursing would become just like the liberal arts diploma mills, graduating people who have no future and nowhere to go in the economy. In other words bull****t promises from academic advisors, pretty graduation ceremony, all dressed up, nowhere to go. In that sense, the learning curve is your best friend because it eliminates mediocre people who want to take your job. A lot of people wash out, only some people are left standing at the end, but the survivors have real value to the profession and get higher wages than 75% of the country. However, if you have the will to succeed you will succeed 95% of the time. Sounds like cliche, but I really believe that. I think in the BSN program we only had 1 person out of 100 who failed the program and had to leave the school. Then there was one more girl, a known cheater, who cheated on every major exam. The cheater graduated, but couldn't pass the boards. Because she cheated her way through nursing school, she didn't really understand the nursing process. If you don't understand the process, you can't fool the testing program. This is what I used to tell myself when I was doing the pre-reqs and the program. I was a very successful student, but organic chemistry was tough, anatomy & physiology exams were tough (I loved the courses but dreaded failure during exams) and then in the actual nursing program pathophysiology and pharmacology were tough. Also, there was one more class in the program, a statistics course, that garbage was so incredibly pointless, dumb, stupid and discouraging you had to force yourself to pick up the book but it would make your stomach turn. I actually took 2 statistics courses, starting with intro to statistics in junior college. That intro course was actually pretty cool, with some math involved but I'm starting to forget the details. Last but not least, I think academic expectations from a nursing candidate are still very reasonable compared to other professions that make good money. My buddy, a pilot, had to train for 12 years before he got his junior airline job as co-pilot on an Airbus. Those pilots start training when they are like 18 but don't get their first real airline job until they are almost 30 years old.

From the interviewer's standpoint asking for more money shows you are a strong candidate. Mediocre candidates have one thing in common--they will for work any salary. They will work for a bag of almonds because they suck and they know it.

Do you like your boss and coworkers? If you do then stay. If you don't or you have doubts then screw them. They are asking you to stay because they suck and their unit sucks. You are in this business for the patients and for yourself, not to make your boss happy. There are a million jobs out there.

Nursing is degrading. It's destroying my self esteem

I recommend expressing yourself outside of nursing. I became a musician and learned electric guitar but sky is the limit to what you can do. I learned to ride a motorcycle. I bought a house and learned how to run it and maintain it. I improved my relationships with friends. I even rented an aircraft and got to fly it as pilot in command and I was happy like a little boy. I bought human anatomy books and art supplies and I started sketching human figures because I like to draw. Pursue an interest or a hobby you have always wanted. If you have always wanted to be an interior designer start taking design classes. Success or failure don't matter but the act of doing can literally change your life. Sometimes we have unfulfilled spiritual needs that will not be fixed by "job satisfaction". Perhaps they are not related to your job and will not be resolved even if they nominate you nurse of the year.

When I was new they disrespected me because I was new. When I became an accomplished nurse with 8 years experience they started disliking me because they are envious. Most recently they dislike me because I'm agency-contract so they imagine I make a lot of money. Just tell yourself you are not there to make friends. You are there for the patients first and to take care of yourself so you have the emotional and physical stamina to continue working. Change jobs if they annoy you. I'm a contract nurse so I change jobs every 3 months.