Rehab Nurse Looking for a Change

[Happybychoice]

Hello,

I am a new nurse in need of some advice. I have been working as an RN at my first nursing job for about 4 months. I'm currently working at a rehab facility and I'm already anxious to leave. I feel trapped in my current position because I gave the impression that I would stay at this facility while I completed my BSN completion which would take at least a year. I'm anxious to leave for a number of reasons, the job is about an hour drive from my home, it's extremely difficult to finish all of my work by a reasonable time, the patient population is hard to work with, and I really want to transition to acute care. The job has become very repetitive in nature and I would love to use more nursing skill. I would love to eventually work on a labor and delivery unit. My plan was to apply to hospitals once I finished my BSN, but I know that waiting until I compete my BSN may not be necessary. My question is, should I stick it out for a year since I have to complete my BSN anyway and I really only have minimal experience? Do I owe this current job my loyalty? Or should I follow my ambitions and start looking for jobs in acute care even thought I only have 4 months of experience under my belt? I'm trying to balance being overly ambitious and exercising patience.

[Sour Lemon]

You don't "owe" your job anything, but rehab tends to be "easy" compared to acute care. If you're already struggling to get out on time, I can't imagine a more acute position would help things.

[Happybychoice]

To clarify, I don't leave out late most days because I'm struggling to complete task within my shift. The last 2 hours of my shift I have a med pass for 30 patients, which can include dressing changes, TB reads, PT/INR finfersticks, staple removals, so forth and so on. And there's a lot of documentation that happens once those things are completed. We don't have long term patients. Our patients have a 7-day average admission, so they can't be awaken at 3am to get some of these things done like you could get away with in a long term facility. Of course once all this is done I have to give a shift report to 2 nurses coming on to take over for day shift. Anyone would have a hard time completing all that within 2 hours. It's doesn't really matter that my patients are stable and the job is overall "easier." If you work night shift, you're leaving late. The problem with that is then driving an hour to get home. The more go on about it, I'm pretty much answering my own questions. Thanks for commenting

[Sour Lemon]

To clarify, I don't leave out late most days because I'm struggling to complete task within my shift. The last 2 hours of my shift I have a med pass for 30 patients, which can include dressing changes, TB reads, PT/INR finfersticks, staple removals, so forth and so on. And there's a lot of documentation that happens once those things are completed. We don't have long term patients. Our patients have a 7-day average admission, so they can't be awaken at 3am to get some of these things done like you could get away with in a long term facility. Of course once all this is done I have to give a shift report to 2 nurses coming on to take over for day shift. Anyone would have a hard time completing all that within 2 hours. It's doesn't really matter that my patients are stable and the job is overall "easier." If you work night shift, you're leaving late. The problem with that is then driving an hour to get home. The more go on about it, I'm pretty much answering my own questions. Thanks for commenting

I don't doubt that you have a lot to do, it's just a little different than an acute care floor. I used to work in ortho/med/surg and float to rehab once in a while. Rehab was definitely the more predictable of the two which made it feel much "easier" to me. A lot of new med/surg nurses stay late to chart and finish tasks ...and some stay late every day who are not so new. The hour long drive does sound exhausting.