nt2002

Emails for the Portland ABSN interviews went out today!

Thank you, this isexactly the type of feedback I was hoping for!

I don't know anything about the hospitals, but high stress/high learning curve 1st position, plus hour & half commute plus young children equals greater possibility of burnout. What about the environment of each unit? Are the coworkers supportive? Do the people who work there seem happy? Do you get a good vibe from your potential boss?

What about taking preAlgebra or whatever the class is before the class you're struggling with? Also, check out khanacademy.org -- I think they do a great job teaching all levels of math and it's free!

FYi, there's a 2015 OHSU ABSN thread already going in the Oregon nurses forum.

If the school(s) you want to apply to will use your highest or most recent grade if you retake the class and if it's too late to get your money back, I'd stick out the class and just do your darnest to get the grade up. That way if you do have to retake it you'll know what to expect for the whole class, not just the first half.

That's a tough choice. I would first take location out of the equation and ask yourself which job do you feel more drawn to, which fits better in terms of your overall career goals (sounds like the peds gig based on what you posted here), which seems like the better work environment, how about your impression of your potential new colleagues? Once you get a sense of that, ask yourself how you feel about relocating, but keep in mind that no move is permanent -- working at the hospital in NC for a couple years could open up doors back in NJ down the road . . . . hmm, I guess I would go for the job you think you'll like better, unless you really think you'll have a hard time adjusting if you move away from family.

I'm not even a nursing student yet but a couple general things leapt out for me. If you do decide to put your clinical experience on your resume (and my understanding is that people on AN have differing opinions on whether this is appropriate or not), I would put your professorial RN work ahead of any clinical experience. Looking at your resume, my inclination would be to leave the list of clinicals off unless there are specific skills you used during a clinical that you want to highlight, or you're applying for a position and want to show that you have experience in that particular area. If you want to leave your preceptorship on, you need to punch it up some (was it really only 64 hours over 3 months or is that a typo?). What did you do there? What skills did you use? How many patients did you care for at one time? For your RN work, you need to be consistent with the verb tense you use. I usually follow the rule that if I'm still in the job, I use present tense -- so it would be "perform patient assessments", etc. Also, there's a typo -- either implement or implemented, not implemenedt. Can you make the description of the work you're currently doing more dynamic? What are the treatments you're implementing? What nursing skills are you using now? The way your resume is currently written, it almost looks like the work you're doing since getting your RN is similar to the work you were doing as a health aide -- I'm assuming you have more responsibility now. Typo for the langhorne HHA position -- Sept not Spet Finally, I would include less detail about the HHA positions. I think you should leave them on since the are health care related and show job continuity. They do raise a question though, why do you have overlapping timeframes for the work in Pittsburg and Langhorne? It doesn't seem like you could have held both jobs at the same time, given the distance between the two. Good luck!

Sent you a PM. Also, you can try hospices -- Medicaid mandates that a certain amount of a hospice provider's services are provided by volunteers. You have to go through a pretty lenghty training that seems to be offered on set cycles before you can start, so if you want to get started right away, this might not be the best option.

This is a lovely post and wonderfully written. Thanks! When I started reading and came to the part about you having to take your "dreaded" job I thought this was going to be a negative rant about LTC-- boy was I wrong (and happy to be!).

It seems weird to me that the neuro training is THAT much shorter. Personally, if this was my first job, I would go with the one that offers the longer training period. (BTW, I'm even a not even a nursing student yet so my opinion is strictly theoretical.)

You might want to take a year off after you get your degree -- maybe work in a health-related field and/or volunteer with a hospital or hospice or something similar just to make sure that you really are interested in nursing. I know it may seem like a long time to wait another year, but you're still young. My advice is to try and be sure that you're on the right path before jumping into more schooling. Of course this is coming from someone who's thinking about starting on her 3rd new career path (assuming being a slacker/underemployed counts as an initial career path), so take it for what it's worth. Are you getting a bachelor's degree? If so and you decide you do want to be a nurse, you could do an ABN and get your BN relatively quickly.

Call HR. If no response in a couple of days after you call HR ( I'm assuming you'll go to voice mail) then I would call or email the nurse manager and say that on your last conversation she told you that HR would be in touch, that you reached out to HR & haven't heard back, so you're following up with her. Good luck!

Very cool! I would maybe follow up with an email in a few days reminding him off the interaction, thanking him for the contact info and letting him know that when you graduate on X date you plan to apply to that company and you hope it will be OK if you get in touch with him at that point just to let him know you applied. And then when that time comes, absolutely follow up with an email. I'd be interested to hear what others think. Even though he put his cell # on the card, I wouldn't call it, esp since you aren't graduating for a while.

Ok, this is just me brainstorming because I haven't been in your position (yet), although I can certainly imagine being there -- so take it for what it's worth . . . . What about going into the interview with at least one way the position you're applying for is an improvement over the place you're already at in mind and just rely on that -- more opportunities for training, more exposure to experienced nurses to learn from, better opportunities for advancement, etc. I think you can even say the other place isn't a good fit if you follow that immediately with why this position IS a good fit. In other words, don't leave it hanging out there for them to follow up but redirect the conversation back to the position you are seeking and your strengths Or try a variation of the flat out truth -- XYZ position wasn't available when you started your search and in this job market you really felt that the most important thing was to get experience and start building your nursing skills. Now that XYZ position is available, you're really excited and this is why you're perfect for the position. Since you have a really solid job history, you could allude to that -- you aren't making the decision to change jobs so soon lightly, as the recruiter can see from your resume, you have had a really long tenure at your previous jobs, and you're really grateful that stinky job was willing to take you on as a new grad, but you're so perfect for XYZ position that you couldn't pass up this opportunity. I have no idea how HR people think, but I assume they at least susdpect that you're totally unhappy where you're at; I'm guessing they're asking to see how you handle the answer. I agree with your instinct that getting too specific about stinky job's failings won't help.