Where to work?

[locolorenzo22, BSN, RN]

Am I just fooling myself? Am I going to end up working on the floor I work on now? I know I'll learn a lot of skills...and have patients from total self care, to the nursing home completely dependent patients....We get patients with all sorts of tubes, lots of ICU transfers, etc. We have the rep of being the toughest floor on the hospital. Would I just get in a lot of skills, and then go on to another department in a year or two? Plus, I know i could count on the aides(those I trust), my fellow nurses, my night crew...etc. know the docs, know the protcols, know what to do for the majority of the patients....

Or do I really want ER, ICU, tele? ER- not so much right out of school....I feel like I need to establish my baseline, and get good skills down...then do them again. Plus, I dunno if I can handle the senseless deaths.....ICU- again, not right away...every time I tech up there, I'm total teching...and running...and there's so many things to do with very borderline patients.....

tele? Maybe, once I get those chest stickies down....again though, they are just stable enough for the floor somedays, and then have lots of codes/emergencies happen....to anyone that remembers what it's like to be the fresh RN...how do you decide?

also I have follow-up interviews at another hospital...2nd choice. I really want to follow through, just to ensure that I have job offers if my own hospital(for whatever reason) doesn't offer me a job, or one that I feel I want. Tele up there and they pay for ACLS, and tele cert.....I'd rather just go out of pocket if my own hospital won't pay for it, since it wouldn't be part of my job on neuro/ortho. good idea?

[CABG patch kid, BSN, RN]

Only you can decide what's best for you. If you feel comfortable where you are now and think you can get good experience there, why not stay? I would have stayed at my old tech job after graduation had I not been moving out of the city; it would have been nice to start out as a new grad knowing the charting, med admin times, normal routines, doctors, etc etc. I came into my current job not knowing my head from a hole in the ground as far as all that goes and it is a much steeper learning curver (the other new grads that preceptored there are doing a bit better than me in terms of feeling competent right now).

I wouldn't worry too much about specialties in your future, they will always be there. A good thing to think about though is whether or not your current hospital will allow you plenty of room to grow. That's the best thing about my new job; if I had stayed at the old one, I would have stagnated fairly quickly since it was a very very small hospital (6 bed ICU!). Where I'm at now, I have a lot of opportunities if I change my mind in the future, I think that's important.

[locolorenzo22, BSN, RN]

Yeah, there are a lot of opportunities...they're expanding, they have cath labs, 12 bed ICUs, 24 bed ER, etc....they're known around town as the hospital you'd drive your dying mother to from Indiana if you had a choice....that's a good perspective, thanks.