OkieNP

I will say as a full disclosure, I haven’t actually been trying full force to get a new position, ha! I just know that amount of job postings are down and the number of applicants per job is 40+. I’m not a new grad, I’ve been an NP for 6 years. I am sure I could get another job if I actually tried, my concern is that what’s already a bad situation is getting worse at an alarming rate. As the above poster says Oklahoma is saturated with NPs. OKLAHOMA. This is not a place that I would call a highly desirable place to live ? as some others have suggested. I’m not even exclusively looking in the largest cities!! If Oklahoma is saturated and we don’t even have many in-person NP schools, the whole country will be saturated soon. So I guess I’m considering.... should I continue as an NP relying on the hope that because by 2025 when we have twice as many NPs I will have 11 years of experience and thus I’ll be a shoe in? Or should I become a psychiatric NP because they won’t be likely to have a shortage? Or should I completely change careers out of fear? “62 percent surplus of primary care NPs by 2025” -https://www.medicaleconomics.com/view/number-nurse-practitioners-more-doubles-study-finds All so this silly article by all nurses:

No I don’t necessarily want to work in a hospital, I think after 5 years of it I would actually prefer not to. I don’t want to become an acute care NP especially if there will be 45 people applying to all the hospital jobs. I do not at all live in a “desirable” state. Though I do live in a city. I am looking in Oklahoma and Colorado. I actually want to work in primary care or urgent care, that seems to be the hardest job to get! When I lived in Tennessee previously and was in NP school I was told the chances of getting a job in the Nashville area were “slim”. I am just wonder if the whole country is like this?

In my area the NP job market is saturated. We had an opening at my place of work and had over 45 applicants for a nurse practitioner position. I’ve had the same NP job for 5 years. They’re now not hiring FNPs for hospital work either (which is all I’ve ever done thus far). I’m feeling very hopeless about my prospects for this occupation in the future. I am currently employed which is something I’m very grateful for, but I’m wondering if I should consider a career change because of how terrible the job market for an NP (specifically I’m an FNP) is. I did not want to always stay in my home state, but the job market doesn’t look much better elsewhere. What do you think?

Nursing educators: do you get the summer off? How does that work with your pay? Interested to hear how it works with you!

This may sound ridiculous I realize, but here we go anyway! I'm an FNP who works in a peds. I foresee myself working with kids. I feel like it would be possible for me to move around jobs in peds (@ this company at least) with my current qualification but at the same time I didn't get hired at a few peds jobs I interviewed with that I wanted, because (I'm assuming) I was a new FNP with some RN peds experience (like 1 private duty case... Ha,so not much!) but otherwise adult (although I worked sickle cell so some were young adult,18-19). Anyway I am trying to decided if I should get a PNP? I don't ever want to be passed up for a job because I'm an FNP plus I'm in my 20s and I'm worried if life takes me out of Oklahoma which is pretty relaxed on specialties (we only have FNP at our university). I will really be in a pickle because I love pediatric specialty/complex/syndromes kind of work. Just cruising some Dallas jobs they say "must be PNP" or even "must be PNP-AC". Anyone known anyone who went from FNP to PNP? I work in peds... What about rotations when legally you can already do the work? I mean I did FNP student rotations at a children's hospital. Ideally I'd like to take a bunch of peds classes and study but continue to work and learn at my peds job with out doing clinical hours for free... At my job... But I think that might be a pipe dream.

I made 41,500 for 9 months in Oklahoma during the 2013-2014 school year, working (at the college) 32 hours a week, plus prepping for lectures (20ish hours of work x 6 a semester on my "free time"). Not bad really, but as an NP in the same area I make 85k as a new grad NP 45 hrs a week only 2 weeks off a year. I quit teaching because the insurance to insure my ONE daughter was $600 a month!!! The education of undergraduates however is significantly easier than working as an NP (stress, too much autonomy, hours).

Did you decide to try it? I have toddlers as well and thought about doing this (I taught previously full time in an undergrad program before I became an FNP) but the pay vs the time spent working on the course does not really compare to just working a shift a week at an urgent care or something and hiring a babysitter. I would love to hear if you actually made it work with busy bodies at home!

Is this for undergraduate or graduate online adjunct positions? Does the amount increase for graduate level? I have a year of previous full time undergraduate faculty experience with an MSN in education and a post master's as an FNP. I am considering getting a DNP just for the benefit of reentering the educational realm one day, so I am trying to sort of do a cost-benefit analysis of the financial aspect of "buying" a DNP to be able to adjunct in an FNP program in the future. Sounds like it might not be worth the $20,000 to get the DNP if that is my only reason to pursue a doctorate.

Can you expand on this point a bit? I am considering trying my hand at online adjunct positions while homeschooling my children, I previously worked for a year as a full time faculty in an RN program and have since become an FNP. I thought I could work on the online course work while they are working on homework independently but maybe this is a pipe dream and I should just hire a sitter once a week and go do a shift at CVS or an urgent care... any thoughts from your experience?

This is my 2 cents on what did and didn't work for me when studying for the FNP boards. I thought I would share since before going to NP school I was an undergraduate nursing professor and I have spent a lot of time trying to "figure out" the systems of academic nursing success for students who struggle and for myself. 1.) Study a lot during your NP program, don't do the bare minimum, just study deeply the subjects as you go along through the program. If you do this your studying for boards shouldn't be a big deal. My NP program was only average at best and I still think they covered most of what you need to know as a basic foundation for the boards. 2.) Don't buy the Fitzgerald review, its such waste of $400. I bought the CDs with online component a year before taking the test so I could start "studying" for the boards or so I thought.... I realized almost immediately when I got the program in the mail that this was a mistake and a total waste of money. I should have spent every minute I spent listening to her, relistening to my class lectures (which were WAY more in depth) or reading my textbooks or notes etc. I kept listening to them of course because damn I just spent $400!! They were a bit helpful don't get me wrong, but I would only recommend them if they had been maybe $75. 3.) After you're classes are done and you want to start prepping for boards take the APEA predictor test for your specialty this test is $35ish and will tell you what your weaknesses are. For example you are told a breakdown of your competency in any particular subject some of my scores for example were Obstetrics: 90% Pediatrics: 73% Psychiatry: 85% etc for the rest but Orthopedics: 30%, Hematology: 30% so I knew mostly I needed to just focus on these two subjects. There is also a comp practice test available at the AANP website if you're choosing this exam. My APEA predictor predicted that I would pass the boards before I even started studying to get ready for them (which may have encouraged me to be a little more lazy in my prep work!) but I think if the predictor had said I might not pass or I definitely wouldn't pass I would have delayed taking the exam to really hardcore study the subjects I did poorly on, and would have retaken the predictor after studying a while. 4.) Study your weak content areas, if you got a 90% on some area, don't waste time studying it because it feels more fun to study because duh, you already get it! There are some really great FREE FREE FREE resources to review your weak areas (like for me... hematology/ortho) that are just as good as $400 programs like www.physicianassistantexamreview.com which you can search through and find just the hematology material to study or just non-diabetic endocrine disorders or whatever. On that website you can listen to a goofy guy explain concepts then take practice quizzes on a specific area of content. 5.) Read over a test prep book like Fitzgerald at your local bookstore one afternoon or buy it used or buy and return it 3 days later . This is way cheaper than a full review course. The point of this is to learn the little "tricks" for making educated guesses at the right answer when you come to a question you have no idea what the answer is. She will teach you how to look at a question stem and options to more closely guess the right answer. Everything else other than this she teaches in her reviews is available for free online. I spent about $550 total in test prep. In hindsight I should have spent $35-90. Hope this helped someone, good luck! OkieNP