Want into Acute Care, already have SNF, what else can I do?

[mavnurs]

I posted another thread and I don't want to repost the whole same thing over here, but essentially, I have several years experience in a busy SNF as an LVN. I went back to school, finishing up my ADN with honors, but can't get a single person to call me back and have been turned down from over a hundred residency and RN- I positions already (yes, all of them accept ADNs.)

I've come to realize that hospitals just don't want me, considering I am not making it past the initial screens whatsoever. So, on to the next step.

The general advice given on here to RNs who can't get a hospital job is to work in a SNF and then reapply later.

Given that I *have* 5 years SNF experience, I don't see what good tacking on an additional year of doing the same thing with different letters behind my name will do. I will do it if I have to, but I just don't get the point. And I am very tired of SNF (I did not express this in my application materials because I know it's bad to talk negatively about your current job field, but I really don't want to do it anymore.)

I am curious about dialysis, just to do something different for once, but I am scared of getting myself locked into another specialty and then being unable to transition into acute care once I have the experience because I won't qualify for a new grad residency *and* won't have the desired experience.

The dialysis forums on here have a lot of people talking about being stuck and having a hard time transitioning away from it, so it makes me wary.

Would it really hurt me to go into dialysis as a new grad RN and then apply for med surg jobs in acute later? Or do I have to stick with SNF in order to give myself the best chance?

(And if y'all have any further advice on how to get an acute care position that I haven't addressed in my other post, I'm all ears.)

[vintagemother, BSN, CNA, LVN, RN]

You should talk to people in your local market. Find out where other new grad RNs have found acute care positions. I, too, was an LVN who then became an RN. I was able to find an acute care position by talking with peers who I graduated with.

I'll be forever grateful to the school friend who told me where he was hired. I went straight to the same unit and introduced myself with resume in hand and a suit on.

Right now, however, my hospital isn't hiring new grads, so some of the new grads have found work in non-acute settings.

Another friend of mine took a job about 3 hrs away because she found a hospital that hired new grads.

The good thing is, I also know quite a few recent grads within the last few years who started off in SNFs/Clinics and were able to obtain acute care positions within 6 mos to a year or so.

[mavnurs]

Most of the people in my class who have a job lined up either already work at the facility or has another 'in' (e.g. relatives at the workplace, former surgical tech so OR liked them, paramedic/EMTs who got snapped up by ER, veterans so they were given preferential hiring at the VA) and a couple who took jobs several hours away. But even the ones who have tech jobs aren't necessarily getting hired by their floors/hospitals, there's a couple in my boat even though they work as techs.

Nobody is seeming to really stress about job hunting that much yet, in fact a lot of people have straight up said "I'm not going to worry about that until I get my license" and completely blew off the rest of us talking about residencies etc.

I'm waiting to hear back on places I applied to that are 6-7 hours away (including a couple that hired classmates!) and then I guess I'll decide what to do... I don't particularly want to move that far away but if that's who will take me then that's where I'll go.