What counts as experience?

Editorial Team / Admin · May 4, 2015

It won't count as nursing experience because you weren't working on your own as a nurse. Can it help you with establishing relationships with a facility/unit? Yes, but that may not be enough to get your first choice of nursing specialties as a new grad, especially as many areas are seeing an oversupply of new grads. Getting a job in L&D may require accepting a job in another unit to establish an employment history, gain nursing experience, and be eligible for internal job postings/transfers.

hollyann89 · May 4, 2015

It won't count as nursing experience because you weren't working on your own as a nurse. Can it help you with establishing relationships with a facility/unit? Yes, but that may not be enough to get your first choice of nursing specialties as a new grad, especially as many areas are seeing an oversupply of new grads. Getting a job in L&D may require accepting a job in another unit to establish an employment history, gain nursing experience, and be eligible for internal job postings/transfers.

Thank you I assumed this would be the answer. Would any other position most helpful in getting transferred to OB or would they all be about the same?

I guess I was just confused because it says OB experience so even if I worked in the ER for a couple of years if I went to apply for an OB job technically I still wouldn't have OB experience.

Meriwhen, ASN, BSN, MSN, RN · May 4, 2015

Experience refers to paid employment in which, as Rose_Queen mentioned, you are working independently as a nurse. Preceptorships, clinical rotations, working in a patient care tech or non-nursing role, and/or volunteer work do NOT count as nursing experience...though any/all of these could help you land a job. But specialty experience they are not.

And I agree with RQ again: you may have to settle for getting any nursing experience first, then transferring over to OB. Most new grads don't start off in their desired specialty right out of the gate, but instead make their way to it over time.

nurseprnRN, BSN, RN · May 4, 2015

Experience refers to paid employment in which, as Rose_Queen mentioned, you are working independently as a nurse. Preceptorships, clinical rotations, working in a patient care tech or non-nursing role, and/or volunteer work do NOT count as nursing experience...though any/all of these could help you land a job. But specialty experience they are not.
And I agree with RQ again: you may have to settle for getting any nursing experience first, then transferring over to OB. Most new grads don't start off in their desired specialty right out of the gate, but instead make their way to it over time.

...or fall in love with something else entirely. This happens all the time and is not to be feared. Life happens.

Not everybody can be in those top choices, else who would take care of everybody else?

Jules A, MSN · May 4, 2015

I'd also consider getting a tech job in L&D or OB. No guarantees but in many cases a unit will give first preference to a present employee. If not and you have to apply to other hospitals I would think it gives you a leg up over other new grads who are applying to those specialties. Good luck.

guest769224 · May 4, 2015

Agree with Jules.

Good work ethic as a tech can set you up for a new grad offer!

Mine has.

TheSpectator · May 4, 2015

...or fall in love with something else entirely. This happens all the time and is not to be feared. Life happens.

Not everybody can be in those top choices, else who would take care of everybody else?

Yep! I work in L&D now. To my surprise, it is NOT my dream job. There's nothing wrong with it. I'm on a good unit, I like my coworkers, and am respected for doing a good job. It just turns out not to be my passion as I thought it would be & there's nothing wrong with that. As I've gotten more experienced in nursing I've realized what I thought looked great/fun in nursing school isn't what I ended up loving. I'm currently interviewing for jobs I never even considered/knew existed as a new grad! Be open to all possibilities :-).

nursy1, BSN, RN · May 6, 2015

Your preceptorship probably won't count as experience for OB, you will probably have to wait until you already build some experience in a hospital and then try to get transferred to get into OB... Sometimes you might luck out and get there as part of a new grad program, but otherwise it's really hard to get there, peds will probably be similar. But still apply for those jobs, you never know til you try. But also apply for every job there is out there, it's a tough job market. Wish you the best of luck!!

turtlesRcool · May 12, 2015

The thing about nursing school is that it only gives you a little taste of the nursing possibilities out there. Usually OB and Peds are short rotations, and they are interesting in part because they are different. You're probably also only seeing the good side. OB seems like this really happy place because you see the good outcomes and the successful postpartum. They're not giving nursing students the patients coming to grip with 3rd trimester fetal demise. They're not going to throw you in with the patient CPS is investigating. In Peds, you get the kids with dehydration, not the kids with cancer.

And there's so much more out there you miss. At least in my program, we never got to do an ER rotation, never got to do home care, never got to do hospice. Our community health nursing was limited. Our time in the ICU, OR, and PACU was brief and mostly observatory. With med-surg, it's a crap shoot what kind of floor you're working on. Maybe cardiac would be your passion, but you've spent most of your clinical time with knee an hip replacements on a surgical floor, so you don't know that. So even if you think you don't want med-surg, you might find you love it on a different floor.

So try to be open to new possibilities. At my hospital, nearly every new hire is in the float pool to start. Permanent assignments on different units usually come as the result of internal placements. If you're hired as a new grad, you'll spend at least 3 months getting proficient in med-surg before they'll even think about placing you in a specialty. The idea is to make sure your general skills and knowledge are strong before you start to focus in on a given area. I mean, even if a woman is at the hospital to give birth, her other medical problems don't just vanish. She still needs to control her diabetes. She may have a heart condition, and the time you spent on telemetry will come in handy during her labor.

Good luck!