Returning to nursing after a 5 year break

While I am not familiar with the area where you are, I can tell you that I had to find a refresher course out here in California. I found it by calling around to the local hospitals and asking the nurse recruiters. The course was actually at a college that had a nursing program. However, the refresher course was distinct and separate from the kids in the RN program. I was kind of surprised to hear that hospitals where you are hire and put RNs through a refresher course and then have to commit to working FT for them. That may be the way they do it at that particular hospital but it doesn't pass the smell test with me. My many years of experience sends up red flags in my mind whenever a hospital is trading a work committment in return for providing you with something. My first thought was that they are having trouble retaining nurses. I may be totally off course about this, but I would look around a little more before committing to something like that.

I believe that another place you can contact for information on RN refresher courses is the state board of nursing since they have to approve all schools and continuing education programs.

The course out here in southern California was basically a refresher of med/surg nursing with clinicals in two different local hospitals. No, you are not paid any kind of stipend. You pay a tuition for the class (it was $650) and attend like any other class you would take. The advantage to this is that the hospitals in which you do the clinical labs get a chance to see you at work and learn who you are. If they like you, you're going to get a job offer if you apply for work with them.

Guys, working with the various machines and gadgets is something you'll have to do on the job. When you are in orientation ask the nurse educators what equipment is available for the nurses to use and if you can have the opportunity to play around with them in an orientation classroom. A lot of this equipment comes with instruction manuals which can be found somewhere in the facility, or on the manufacturers website. As long as you are aware that there are gizmos out there and the things they can do is most important to know. That way you can ask if the facility you're working at has one of them when the need arises. There are now so many different IV pumps out on the market that it is hard to just walk up to one and start pressing buttons without some sort of little practice with it first. Some are capable of doing some very sophisticated things and others are very simple and do a straightforward task. Seems like every hospital has a different brand of IV pump.