I am graduating in may with my BSN, I know where I want to be on what kind of a floor. However, getting into one of those floors can be quite hard. I want to be in critical and in 5 or so years try CRNA school or flight nurse. I am just curious what was your first job? Was it your dream job? Did you love it/hate it? If you hated it and could do it over what would you do differently?
Thanks in advance for the replies it does mean a lot to hear from the community
I'm on a medical isolation unit. I love learning as it's busy but gowning up and down for 5 or more patients is not fun....especially when they're not stable. I just feel like I waste so much time looking for the right fitted mask and explaining to family why they need the gowns (and they rarely to never comply).
Then having infection control raid us every two weeks on our floor saying "wash your hands before entering room, after and any time before wearing gloves". So I wash my hands too much and now they look 120 years old. I get washing my hands after each patient/room but why before wearing the gloves???
Sorry on the side vent.
I want a new job now with less hand death or a regular medicine floor.
My first job as a LPN was working on a 15 bed ortho/surg floor. My first job as a RN was working on a 20 bed med/surg/peds floor in a Navajo facility. I loved both jobs. Now I work LTC and Hospice for the V.A.
My only job as an LPN was in LTC, which I loved. My first job as an RN was in med/surg but we only took post-operative patients since it was a more specialized unit, and I loved that job.
My first and current job is in home palliative shift nursing, i love it, it has it's challenges but i've gotten tons of experiences with ventilators, cpap, etc. Seriously take what you can right out of school, don't hold out for those dream jobs or you'll be waiting a while, i want to get into the hospital, but i'm biding my time until i get this experience. I'm a RPN in Ontario, our scope of practice isn't much different than an RN. Good luck and Congrats on your graduation you worked hard.
I started out on med-surg/tele and then moved to the ER after 1 year. I wasn't crazy about the job but it was a beginning and my career is moving along. Would I do it again? Certainly.
Hold out for an ICU position and you may end up frozen out of the marketplace. Take the first position you can find, I say... especially if it's in an acute care facility.
My first job as a nurse was as a bedside nurse in a pediatric hospital -- this was my first choice job at the time I started. I liked the job, and would choose it again, but eventually decided that I'd had enough of working holidays and every other weekend. I've switched to public health nursing, which I *love* -- education was always my favorite part of hospital nursing, and now it's a much bigger percentage of what I do. My year and a half of hospital nursing is a very solid foundation for what I do now so I'm grateful for it, but I have no intention of going back -- I hope my current job is my last!
As far as "holding out" for an ICU job, I would advise against it. Apply by all means, and if you get an ICU job straight out of nursing school, go for it, but you should definitely apply for med/surg positions too, and take what you can get. While you're "holding out" you could instead be getting the experience that might actually get you that ICU job. Most hospitals give preference to internal transfers over outside applicants, so once you get a job, you can apply to transfer to ICU when there's an opening.
Thanks for the replies guys, I am just really torn if I should hold out for an ICU job/residency program. Or take a tele job which I am told I can transition into their critical care floor when they get their expansion in the fall
I graduated this past Dec. and while I was lucky enough to get a job on a floor I like (not first choice but I still like it!:redpinkhe) I have A LOT of friends who graduated in Dec and MAY 2010 and they still don't have steady jobs or a job at all. (A couple of them landed really crappy registry jobs that are literally only giving them like 5 shifts a MONTH boooo).
Anyway, I don't know how the job market is where you are, but in IL it SUCKS big time. If it were me I'd take the tele floor and transfer later - you'd have a steady job & a foot in the door.
My first job was/is med-surg/tele. At almost the one year mark, I'm getting a hang of it and it's ok. I get along with my co-workers and have learned how to do a lot of things on my own.
In the early 90's in the UK there were no jobs so I worked for the hospital float pool (in that time students had a very strong clinical background when they qualified and all they had never done on their own was the drug round)
It took about 3 months for me to get my first RN job and I worked on a Renal floor.
Phoenix Nurse
19 Posts
Ortho/Trauma on busy med surg floor as RN. I got good experience and stayed their for 2 years then transfered to Peds.