To Those Nurses/Nursing Students Who Fear Never Making It to the Hospital....

[Wrench Party]

This little thread is for all the nurses and nursing students who fear:

1) they'll never get a hospital job if they work somewhere else first (LTC, clinic, prisons, etc.)

2) no one will hire you back to the bedside if you ever leave.

3) what their instructor/manager/coworkers said will come true

I'm here to tell you the real world is not so rigid like you've been told based on my own experience.

I worked at a large teaching hospital in a specialty role as a new grad, and wanted to try working in a clinic for awhile, so I left. Clinic nursing is cool, but I want to further my career into teaching and precepting the next few years. On a whim, I applied for the ED and a surgical stepdown floor at two different facilities. I got offers for both yesterday after interviews, not having traditional floor experience. I'm currently leaning towards the stepdown because the manager and staff are ridiculously awesome and it's close to my house.

Take home point: each job will teach you something invaluable about yourself as a nurse, and you can parlay these into selling points. The clinic was great for working on my 'soft skills' - empathy, communication, patient education.

And if you have no desire to ever, ever work in a hospital? We're all cut from different cloths, and our paths are all valid. That's what makes nursing so great!

[Purple_roses]

Glad to see you've had success! Just curious, what area are you in? Nurses in my area don't have a problem finding hospital jobs either, no matter where they started. But some areas are nightmares.

[TheCommuter, BSN, RN]

And if you have no desire to ever, ever work in a hospital? We're all cut from different cloths, and our paths are all valid.

This is me. :)

Personally, I'm glad there's a steady stream of nurses who would willingly bust their behinds in acute care hospitals and submit themselves to all of the physically difficult jobs.

[Wrench Party]

I'm in NC. We're a tight market in my area because of all the nursing schools. I expect our market is loosening up some and

people are starting to move around in jobs.

[ambr46]

It's really hard to find your first hospital job as a new RN in central and southern California. I drive an hour and ten minutes to work because none of the local hospitals would even interview me. I was an LVN for 10 years prior to that with hospital experience but Iwas told that it doesn't count. I love my job working in med surg and am sure I wouldn't have any problem getting in to the local hospitals now but I really love the small community hospital where I work so don't plan on leaving any time soon. I think it all depends on the demographics of the area...supply vs. demand etc.