South FL new grads

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Are new grads getting hired in south FL (west palm beach in particular)? My school's student services claims a 100% placement rate right now for nurse grads. Just wonder if that is accurate.

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Specializes in ICU, PICU, School Nursing, Case Mgt.

Boy, I don't know about that!

I live in PBG but have worked in many of the major hospitals in the WPB area.

I know the market is pretty tight right now. I know a new grad in WPB, a guy who had a really good school record and he has been looking for over 6 months. I also have 3 friends with experience that have been looking for several months.

How about checking out Martin Co? I did hear that Martin Memorial was hiring.

What I have done in the past when looking is-don't go thru the HR dept of the hospitals if you can help it. I usually try to find out the name of the nurse manager of a particular unit of a particular hospital that I am interested in. I then call her/him directly and ask if I can come in and "talk to them" about their unit or specialty, this sort of becomes an "informal" interview. Ask intelligent questions and tell them you would really like to try this type of nursing. Then follow up with a thank you for your time note about 2 days later, let them know you are interested in a position. Touch base with them about once a week...in the meantime you can fill out an application at the hospital. Most of them are done on line now. That personal contact has always worked for me.

I can't imagine a program stating that they have a 100% placement rate...I guess there is always a first.

You might also consider Broward County at first to get some experience and then move back up. I know several nurses that have done that.

Good luck, the market in PBC has been tight.

s

(I have been working here for 16+ years in many hospitals)

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Specializes in OR.

I have also been searching for jobs in the wpb area, but I'm not a new grad. The good thing is that there are a lot of hospitals with a good number of positions open. The bad news is that most of the positions are for med/surg, tele, or ortho (which I do NOT want to do). If you are willing to try one of those floors, there are a lot of positions. Palms West seems to only be hiring those with recent experience, but they dont have too many jobs anyway. I have heard really good things about Jupiter Medical but they dont have hardly any full time positions available (I dont think they have a big turnover, which is a good thing). Where in PB county are you looking? These are the hospitals on my list:

- Jupiter Medical Center

- Gardens Medical Center (Tenet)

- Good Sam (Tenet)

- St. Mary's (Tenet)

- JFK (HCA)

- Columbia (HCA)

- Palms West (HCA)

- Martin Memorial South in Stuart

- Wellington Regional

- Bethesda

I am not looking to go back to the bedside, so I am a little more picky when it comes to jobs, but I just started looking this week. So who knows, if the job market is that bad, then I'll probably end up at the bedside again....booo.

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Can't understand why there's difficulty finding a job. Some of the travel agencies have plenty of jobs down there.

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