Question for those that hire

[EDRN-2010]

Does the hospital a RN is coming from impact whether or not you will interview the person? As I begin to think about my finding my first RN job, I am wondering this. There is a really good chance that if I had trouble finding a job, through connections I could get a position in the ED at a local community hospital. A friend of mine thinks working at a small "hick town" hospital might make me less desirable when/if I applied for a job at one of the large level 1 trauma hospitals. I am thinking that having experience would be a plus? What do you think?

[JulieCVICURN, BSN, RN]

I don't hire, but I know that my team leader likes to hire people from Chicago hospitals because it's kind of assumed that they're used to a high stress fast paced environment. Having said that, she also doesn't turn away people from other facilities.

And just an FYI, my hospital is in rural Illinois and has one of the most respected open heart surgery programs in the country, in addition to a world class neurosurgeon. Hicksville isn't what it used to be!

[paacollins]

I live in a town that has a small, fairly rural hospital. The ED here sees it all and transfers out the more complex cases. The two larger, "big city" hospitals about 45 minutes from here, have their EDs set up in sections. One section sees heart patients, another trauma, another Peds, etc. So the nurses in those hospitals are geared toward whatever area they work in. The nurses in the smaller hospital ED see it all sorts of cases and get experience in many different areas.

[EDRN-2010]

I guess I should specify. The largest hospital is about a 15 minute drive from this community hospital, and there are two other large well equipt hospitals within 20 minutes and several more within 30-45. In this instance, this hospital does see a wide variety of cases but the majority are lower acuity.

I would hope there would be ample time for training, however there is not a formal new grad training program - they typically do not hire new grads.

[HHheart]

I hire the nurses that work in our home health agency. My early days in nursing were spent in a teeny tiny little rural hospital where the nurses did everything from ED to ICU to dumping the trash. We learned it all, did it all. I have always felt that my time in that little hospital molded me into a nurse that can roll with the punches, and is willing to lend a hand anywhere that I am needed. As a home health director, I have to look for nurses with a nice variety of skill sets. I don't always find this in nurses from large institutions. Generally speaking, many of them have no IV or venipuncture skills because in the big facilities, this is done by others. I don't qualify or disqualify anyone based on where they worked in the past, though. I just wanted to chime in on why small-hospital nurses deserve as much consideration as any others. :)

[tewdles, RN]

I hired nurses for a PICU. I hired based upon the person. I am not an advocate of "warm body" hiring and while experience is important I felt that the orientation and precepting we offered was going to make more of a difference in the success of the person than their previous PICU experience. So, for me as the hiring manager, it was important to understand what job it was that I was trying to fill, what shift, what was the staff mix...what were the personality types, etc. I was interested in having a functional TEAM made up of competent and successful nurses. This meant that I paid close attention to discovering as best I could, the person behind the degree...worked really well for me and the unit.

[Music in My Heart]

I was recently faced with just that choice. My decision was to take the job at the rural hospital because (a) I simply can't afford not to be drawing a decent wage and (b) the limited experience at the rural hospital is still better than being in a SNF or working at Starbucks.