Resume

[whelen77]

I am a new nurse. Applying for my first job. I really would like some help on how to build my resume. I plan on making psychiatric my home. Does anyone have suggestions on what I could write that would stand out among the crowd? Thank you for all you help.

[CassiesMomma]

I work in an adolescent facility and they were more interested in any experience that I may have had with children - I taught literacy to DJJ kids in college, I have kids of my own, I teach Sunday School, I taught college freshmen while in grad school, that kind of thing. I really did have some experience with kids when I thought about it. Also, if you've worked Med/Surg or ER you've dealt with psych. Play up the aspects of your resume that are specific to psych in the cover letter. I had a more generic resume with school, work experience, and skills/abilities but in the cover letter I expressed my desire to get into psych and which aspects of my experience and abilities lend themselves to psych. I think one of the best things to express is a situation in which you took a lot of abuse from a patient and in the end realized that it wasn't personal and that you couldn't take things personally in nursing because in psych, you gotta have thick skin and be able to turn the other cheek when someone is insulting or rude. It's a hard place for folks to be and the family members are sometimes the ill ones! I love psych and I can't imagine any specialty I'd rather be in but it isn't pretty much of the time, and sometimes it'll just break your heart but then I'm still pretty new and just out of school too so the joke where I work is that I still like the patients. I do though and I am lucky to be able to work with them! Oh yeah, we don't use chemical or physical restraints, only manual holds - so we take some pretty hard blows on occasion as well! Good luck!