momof4crazies

The general "culture" of the hospital is one that supports their nurses. There are lots of staff appreciation things that go on, they have much better benefits, and the hospital is much better off financially - which shows in a lot of ways. They have more up to date technology, better doctors, etc. Honestly, I think the Ortho Unit is the only one I have heard bad things about. I have had clinicals at both hospitals, and you can tell the difference right away with how the nurses feel about their jobs. If my job offer was almost anywhere else in the better hospital, it would be a no brainer for me. But, it's not - so I'm leaning towards the better unit.

I am a student who is graduating in May. I have already received a job offer at the better hospital in my area. Unfortunately, it's not in an area I want to work in (the offer is for an Ortho Unit). My other option is to work at a hospital that isn't as good, but has openings in specialties I am more interested in (ER, ICU, Step Down, etc.) So I'm really conflicted - do I work at the hospital that has a better reputation, employees (in general) that seem more satisfied, and for what it's worth is a lot closer to home? Or do I work at the hospital with a less than stellar reputation, in a specialty I enjoy, but who's employees do not seem happy? From what I have heard from friends who work at the "better" hospital, the Ortho Unit is severely short staffed, has patient ratios of 1:8, and has a very high staff turnover and therefore is almost completely comprised of new grads.

The teachers don't seem to think it's a big deal. They basically said you are all doing well, don't worry about the HESI. My concern is that the content we were taught didn't line up with what the HESI expected us to learn. Like I said, this is the 3rd HESI we have taken and the first time where everyone basically walked out saying "we never learned 90% of that content!"

Our class just took our 3rd HESI content exam, and the scores were somewhat abysmal. There were quite a few people who scored in the 600 range and most were in the low to mid 700 range. I personally dropped almost 400 points from our last 2 HESI exams. My question is this - should we be concerned about what we learned/didn't learn this semester? There was such a dramatic drop-off that now a lot of us are panicking about being unprepared for our next semester. Despite doing so poorly on the HESI, most of us have high B to low A grades for the semester. Now we are stuck thinking, "We don't even know what we don't know!" So should we be freaking out now, or not?!