What you are doing completely wrong

[sauce]

So i have been scavenging this website for a while now. It always seems to have the same complaint on the forums regarding nurse practitioners. I can't find a job.” What are your hours”

How stressful is your job”

How much do you get paid”

How much vacation time do you get”

How do you deal with difficult patients”

Once i see somebody ask those questions, I already know why they can't find a job.

YOU ARE LOOKING FOR THE EASY

What is the easy you say?

It is doing what takes the least amount of effort to obtain the outcomes you want.

It is going to be a difficult market for many nurse practitioners in the future. This i can say due to the easiness they have made it to get a license. Unfortunately they have removed almost all barriers in regards to obtaining a license to pass rx medicine.

Online, part-time, from your own home, set up your own clinical, pay this and that money and you obtain a masters degree, etc etc.

THE EASY

I do not see many posts regarding, how people can make themselves stand out and land an awesome 6 figure job straight out of his or her program. I just see people wanting the EASY.

So step off of your soap boxes for a few minutes and take a listen, and also take a step into the DIFFICULT.

What is the DIFFICULT?

The difficult is what you don't want to do. Thats right. This is going to SUCK. At least for starters it will.

Step one- pick up and economics text book and read the entire thing this week. Okay?

Did you do it? if not you might as well sit back and continue with the easy, because you don't want to do whats hard in order to RISE ABOVE THE EPICUREANS. Don't know what epicureans are? READ YOUR ECONOMICS TEXTBOOK

.

Okay now that you should have read the textbook you are ready to move on. Do you know what you are doing wrong?

No?

WELL YOU DID NOT READ THE ECONOMICS TEXTBOOK THEN GO BACK AND READ IT NOW.

You are doing what everybody else is doing what is what is wrong. What is everybody else doing?

Applying for jobs online

slacking during clinical

not studying more than they need to

focusing on stuff that does not matter

watching grey's anatomy

going to the easiest and nearest clinical site

not asking preceptors or instructors questions

not ‘networking'

not trying to understand the business of medicine

complaining about not having a job

not walking into offices dropping off your resume in person

not asking business questions to preceptors

not focusing on how the clinics you precept at make more money

not learning other skills besides nurse-practitionering

not reading non-fiction books

not realizing that nobody gives two craps about your previous RN experience

not acting like you want to learn

acting like you already know enough

not realizing that nobody gives even one and a half craps about your nursing research besides the phd teacher in your program

not being persistent

not being willing to move in order to find a job

not reading the economics textbook i told you to read 10 minutes ago

not realizing that advanced practice nursing is not advanced practice nursing

posting selfies on Facebook in your lab coat

going to for profit online programs

thinking about what your job can do for you instead of thinking about what you can do for the company you work for.

not doing things differently

thinking you will have your dream job out of school

Fortunately below i am going to tell you how to succeed and make 6 figures right out of your program like i did without being any smarter or gifted than anybody else.

Just do the opposite of what it stated above and you will be rolling in the dough.

Look for the hardest job

look for the job everybody quit from and apply to it

understand leverage

understand there are more than two options. quitting and staying are not the only two options you have at a job.

do what everybody else doesn't want to do

make yourself like it

be stoic

I did just that and made 165000 last year working 43 hours a week with full benefits. working 7 days on 7 days off nightshift. And i have only been an fnp one year. Right now I'm enjoying my 4th vacation this year since i always get 7 days off.

And i am no smarter than you are. I just followed the above advice

GOODLUCK

[babyNP., APRN]

Every other medical profession sets up clinical hours for their students. Why should NP education be any different? I agree that I wish there were more brick & mortar schools. This mentality of not caring how others get their education is unsettling- it should be standardized and understood that schools set up clinical sites. If we turn our backs on our future, where will we be left?

In any case, I think we'll have to agree to disagree. I don't mind working a few extra hours a week reading new literature related to my job and as my patients need them, if my work day has been very busy and I need to catch up on charting, but I'm not going to be married to my job. I have a family and a life outside of work. I guess I'm fortunate in that I'm able to work three 12s a week in order to do that in a hospitalist role, making six figures a year, on day shift for the most part.

[Jules A, MSN]

Every other medical profession sets up clinical hours for their students. Why should NP education be any different? I agree that I wish there were more brick & mortar schools. This mentality of not caring how others get their education is unsettling- it should be standardized and understood that schools set up clinical sites. If we turn our backs on our future, where will we be left?

I almost always find your posts right on target, and am in awe of anyone who can be a NICU NP, but I totally don't get the big deal about finding our own clinical sites. If we really want equity in practice we should ensure that NP students have actually worked as a nurse prior to thinking they can be an advanced practice clinician.

Arranging my own clinicals for both NP programs I completed was a major plus, imo. I have spent my years as a RN and NP making invaluable contacts at several hospitals which ensured I had plenty of competent physicians who would allow me to get the hours with them. One of my motivations to go into prescribing was the huge discrepancies in patient outcomes I have anecdotally noted between providers who know what the hell they are doing and the ones who don't. This includes both physicians and NPs of course but in any event I did not want to learn from someone who isn't at the top of their game.

[babyNP., APRN]

Well, you're free to disagree of course (thanks for the kind words about my posts, though).

I'd just note that I worked as a RN for 6 years at the same hospital and did not have any other hospital contacts. I'm not sure that I would have been able to set up any clinical sites for myself (I actually did contact some hospitals close to my house since my school was 2 hours away (brick and mortar) and I was rejected by 5 hospitals despite my experience and excellent reputation of my school). It was not an option to do clinical at my own facility because I needed delivery room experience and my hospital was 100% transport-in.

I don't think asking for stricter entry requirements into NP school excludes the idea that students be asked to pay tuition to a school and find their own clinical sites. These aren't 2 competing ideas- we should be asking for both.

[Jules A, MSN]

I'd just note that I worked as a RN for 6 years at the same hospital and did not have any other hospital contacts. I'm not sure that I would have been able to set up any clinical sites for myself (I actually did contact some hospitals close to my house since my school was 2 hours away (brick and mortar) and I was rejected by 5 hospitals despite my experience and excellent reputation of my school)..

Yeah in most cases you need to know someone and have an in to find your own preceptor. What are your feelings about being given the option? That is how my psych-NP school was, I found my own because I could and wanted to but those who didn't have any contacts were assigned to preceptors. I'm definitely a bit of a control freak so the thought of being randomly assigned to someone with minimal experience or who was a dope still makes me shudder.

[babyNP., APRN]

Oh yeah, being given the option is totally fine, IMO. I almost went abroad for my last clinical rotation due to a unique opportunity, but it didn't pan out.

[anh06005, MSN, APRN, NP]

I would have loved an option! I left the hospital for home health about 2 years before my clinicals began. By then doctors sure didn't know my face or name. Many of the MD's in my area also had substantial ties to a private university in my town that had a PA program so they were often reserved for that group over an "outsider" despite my school and program pumping out great RN's and NP's.

[automotiveRN67]

I think setting up your own clinical hours is a good real-world test to see if a student can network. Since the requirements for online programs are so low, this is one way to let students see what they will be up against.

Most medical professions are arranged marriages. An x-ray tech is taught how to take x-rays, tested during clinical rotations, and take a job doing exactly that. Patient walks in, gets and xray, leaves. Nurses are the same. You don't see many nurses calling around town to see if there are any patients that need to be admitted when the census is low. They just say "Yay. My shift was cancelled".

I have seen physician specialists take a beating in recent years. With decreased reimbursement, increased out-of-pocket and higher costs, its a tough game out there. Finding a group of GP's who regularly refer patients to your practice is how you pay your bills. At the last cardiology practice I worked at, we guaranteed same day wet-reading of the stress tests we did, and next day phone call to the PCP for any positive results. Not every patient that had a stress test was our patient....yet. But providing this service for the PCP saved them a phone call from the patient asking the results of their test.

So how does this compare to finding your own clinicals in NP school? Those who have the personality to make those connections do better than those who don't. And I guarantee you that any specialty practice that hires you is going to expect you to bring in consults. GP's may have it different. I don't know. I have never worked in a primary care office.

And.... those who make the connections and arrange their own clinical hours may end up training themselves for their own position. Most physicians are way to busy to train someone (let you do your clinicals with them), if they aren't looking at you as a prospect. This is your time to make your own job.

While the OP was a little coorifice, he/she did make a point.

[Hi2Jenn]

I went in person to a brick and mortar school. That school set up our clinicals for us. We didn't have the option to set up our own. It sucked. Sometimes the placement was in a specialty that you didn't want anything to do with. Sometimes the docs/nps didn't see enough patients or saw so many they weren't training you. There is both good and bad.

[nyc2011]

BabyNP: Wow you have a great job!! I would love to work 3 12 hr shifts and make six figures…..awesome stuff….How did you come across that type of job ?