Psych nursing future

student_nurse06 · Oct 12, 2008

Sorry I meant to say Psych nurses do not get offended. :no:

jenfromjersey · Oct 12, 2008

I started my college education in a psycho-social rehabilitation program as psych was always an interesting field to me. Unfortunately, after about a year I found that the starting salaries once I graduated would be equal to or less than what I was already making in an office job. I decided, at another student's suggestion, to transfer into nursing. This way, I would be able to work in pysch, but as a nurse making a higher salary. That was exactly what I did. After about 2 years, I started to feel as if I was going to lose my clinical skills and really wanted to work in the hospital so I interviewed at local hospitals and was easily accepted onto a med/surg floor. Although I was not given numerous choices of floors I would be working on, I was given an adequate orientation to the floor and ended up transferring and working on several different floors and earning my telemetry certification through the hospital. I presently work in the ER and love it. However, I still have a soft spot for psych and currently work every other weekend at an inpatient pysch facility (where I've been working per diem for the last 4 years). I have actually found that this experience has been helpful to me in the ER because you routinely have to deal with pysch patients, substance abusers, alcoholics, etc and knowing how to effectively deal with this population is an asset and saves you a lot of aggravation.

My advice to you would be to take the job in psych and continue to look for a hospital job if that 's where you really want to be. You can always stay on at the facility per diem. The experience you get learning how to relate with people and diffuse volatile situations will only better serve you later on.

Just my :twocents:

Good luck.

jandkmom · Oct 12, 2008

Not a New Jersey nurse here but just saw this topic and thought that I'd give my two cents. Hope you don't mind. I graduated from nursing school in 1994 and worked as on inpatient psych units for four years. I started getting a little burned out and decided that I really wanted to get some other experiences. I actually did not have that easy of a time getting a job in med surg. I took an RN refresher class and then still, it wasn't all that easy to transition back in to the role of a med surg nurse. I did get a job working on an ortho/general surgery floor but I was paid the same as a new grad since they gave me an extra long orientation to get my feet wet again.

Granted this was before the whole nursing shortage. Heck when I was a new grad, it was hard to find any job. Now days it might be a totally different story....

I loved being a psych nurse and learned a lot during those four years. Good luck figuring it all out. :)

student_nurse06 · Oct 12, 2008

Thank you for your time and thoughts both jenfromjersey and jandkmom. Considering both of your views I am going to try few more weeks and then make a decision whether I am going to go into psych. It's pretty scary to be a new grad and jobless,it makes me doubt myself. I recently went to the job fair in Edison and was astonished at the amount of nurses attended

the job fair almost all are of them are searching for a job too. Hope I will find something in next few weeks.

Anyway thankyou again guys.