Recently new RN with associates, works in nursing home looking for med-surg position

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Here's my situation, I'm a recently new RN with my associate's, only been working a little less than a year at a nursing home which I like but I need med-surg experience in a hospital setting. I'm still working on my bachelor's.

I've had a couple of interviews at good hospitals but I'm not sure if they are disintersted because I started out in the nursing home or maybe I'm just not sure what's missing from my resume. It's pretty basic. I'm a friendly, young, bright new grad with initiative so now what?

I'm not against working in long-term care at all I'm just looking towards something else and starting to get discouraged. Any advice on interviews an job-hunting? Anything helps.

Thanks

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I graduated in May 2011 and could not find a jobat a hospital. I worked at a nursing home that had a transitional/medicareunit. I am fortunate to have finally gotten a medsurg/tele job. LTC is viewedas an easy no skills job unfortunately but this is not always the case. On atransitional/Medicare unit you will be takinng care of patients who are therefor physical therapy and will then go home. They tend to have more acuteissues like CHF, PNA, DVT, and some IVs. If you stay at just a LTC unityou be only be passing PO meds and doing wound care. In the medicare unit I didIVs, wound care, insulins, heparins, incentive spirometers, remove staples andstitches, CPM therapy, took my own INR levels for the pharmacist to titratecoumadins and more. I had to chart head to toe assessments. I constantlyadmitted, transferred and discharged patients. Not all patients are"elderly". I have had patients as young as in their 50's but neededto be in a nursing home temporarily to get better and because they are nothealthy enough to rely mainly on home care. When you get an interview ata hospital make sure you tell them all that you do. Nursing homes arevery modern and can be aggressive in medical treatment these days. There are even nursing homes that have ventilator and trach patients.

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Just make sure to tell your employers of every single acute like care you gave. Someone had a CHF exacerbation right at some time? you had to do your own admissions and discharges. You had to time manage better than most nurses because of your patient ratio in LTC. You dealt with coumadin precautions etc. just make sure they know we were not just changing briefs to bedridden ppl.

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Hi! I work in a rehab facility. It has long term but it also has subacute, two floors. I work in sub1. I came from emergency psych with 6 pts to subacute with 20! I agree that subacute is a better start. I've never worked in longterm but I will say you will learn.. for example I have a total care pt with trache and frequent suctioning, another trache no suction both with peg tubes one is continuous, 8 diabetics, 1 wound vac with a 1 foot in length wound and 6 inches deep that has retention sutures, cpm machine , several with chf continuos o2, neb txs, and routine heparines / lovenox. Dvt fractures of hips shoulders casts all of it plus meds for 20 and wound care for 7 so I can agree that you learn lots of skills. I am new and graduated last may and I learned a lot in a short time. Bad thing though is assessments are quick, unless complaints of something . We do the orders call drs pharmacy plus we never have supplies and bp machines suck so I'm always doing manual which I'm great at now. It's a good alternative to a hospital. I interviewed at several EDs and they all said they would consider one year of subacute plus my Ed psych

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