Difficulty finding work for new RN?

[Phil Thien]

Does anyone know how difficult it may or may not be for a newly graduated registered nurse to find work?

Do hospitals require experience? Do you have to start in a doctor's office or something?

[Ken Fitzgerald]

Phil,

In most areas there are advertisments daily for nurses with or without experience. Nursing is one field that there is a nationwide shortage. The shortage will be come larger in the future IMHO. Nursing is one of the most underated, unappreciated professions in the medical field. Of course, I am prejudiced as I have a little sister who is a nurse-practioner.

[Jim O'Dell]

In the last few years here, nurses were commanding signing bonuses. Don't know if it's still true or not. Jim.

[Matt Meiser]

I know a couple recent graduates in nursing and most had jobs before they graduated--they just kept on working at the places where they'd been doing their internships, or whatever that's called in nursing.

[Jerome Stanek]

Both my daughter in laws have just become RNs they had trouble getting a job in a hospital One even had a loan through a hospital that said they would hire her when she graduated they called her after almost a year. The other one had to work in a nursing home before she she was offered a job at a hospital she will be starting that job the end of this month.

[glenn bradley]

Sounds like it differs strongly by region. I would check with your local nurses association: ​http://www.wisconsinnurses.org/

[Phil Thien]

Both my daughter in laws have just become RNs they had trouble getting a job in a hospital One even had a loan through a hospital that said they would hire her when she graduated they called her after almost a year. The other one had to work in a nursing home before she she was offered a job at a hospital she will be starting that job the end of this month.

Thanks for all the responses.

I think the experiences of the young lady I've heard about mirror your comments. She is new, wants to work in a hospital, and the hospitals want some experience.

My wife will suggest checking with nursing homes.

[Cyrus Brewster 7]

It really depends on region. A cousin of mine moved from upsate NewYork, where she had a good nursing position - $32/hr - to rural Virginia where she was offered no more than $22/hr starting. She moved there to be closer to family. The only place where she found a comparable wage was to drive a little over an hour towards Richmond. This did not appeal to her; but the market seems, at least in VA, to depend on a more metropolitan area.

As stated before, some regions will offer signing bonuses. It depends on the willingness to move, which in my opinion, is not a bad thing for a young person to do to broaden their worldly outlook.

[Joe Pelonio]

Yes, the nationwide shortage is no more, but some areas that are still growing do need them. Here, for example they just opened a new hospital after expanding two others. Up by my mom's in Sequim, WA they continue to build new nursing homes as retirees continue to move there in droves. Other areas with serious foreclosure problems are losing population and reducing staff.

[Glenn Clabo]

Joe...The shortage is not over and in fact is projected as getting much worse. My wife is the Dean of a Nursing School...albeit primarily advanced degreed right now...has doubled the size of her incoming classes. The issue she continues to have is availability of faculty. It is true however that there are some localized hospitals that are letting go of staff...mostly due to money concerns. If an RN wants a job and is willing to relocate...the job future is endless.

In June 2011, Wanted Analytics (http://www.ere.net/2011/06/08/nurse-turnover-in-hospitals) reported that employers and staffing agencies posted more than 121,000 new job ads for Registered Nurses in May, up 46% from May 2010. About 10% of that growth, or 12,700, were ads placed for positions at general and surgical hospitals, where annual turnover rates for RNs average 14% according to a recent KPMG survey (http://www.ere.net/2011/06/08/nurse-turnover-in-hospitals/).

According to a special issue of the Monthly Labor Review (http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2011/04/art2full.pdf) released in April 2011, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that “the health care industry added 428,000 jobs throughout the 18-month recession from December 2007 until June 2009, and has continued to grow at a steady rate since the end of the recession.” As the largest segment of the healthcare workforce, RNs were recruited to fill many of these new positions.

[Frank Drew]

What Glen said; whatever local or regional differences exist, the national nursing shortage is real and will only get worse in the next decades. Any apparent softness in the market is more due to the down economy than to any real (or lasting) decrease in the need for nurses.

Fact: The average age of R.N.s nationally is mid to upper 40s, with the obvious implication that there are a lot of nurses older than that who are nearing retirement age, and those retirements will come at the time when we're going to be seeing a huge increase in patient populations due to the coming age-related health care needs of the baby boom generation (just turning mid-60s now).

Nursing schools currently can't afford to pay nurse/teachers enough to attract them, in sufficient numbers, away from clinical nursing, so the schools don't have enough qualified instructors to be able to push through new graduates in anything like the numbers needed.

Particularly if willing to travel, nurses will always be able to find work, IMO. Keeping in mind what I said above about the current recessionary soft labor market, having to start out working in nursing homes is definitely not the norm; in ten years working alongside nurses in emergency departments, not one, that I was aware of, started her or his career anywhere but in a hospital, usually in med/surg or other inpatient units. I just phoned work to ask one of our senior nurses the same question and he told me that, in all the time he's been a nurse (20+ years), he's known perhaps one or two nurses who began their careers in nursing homes.

Of course, with the aging of the population, nursing homes will be a growth industry. It's not going to be pretty, the future of health care in America. IMO.

[Frank Drew]

Phil,

To answer your question a bit more specifically, work in doctors' offices isn't considered particularly good experience if hospital work is the goal; additionally, as far as I know, the pay isn't so special, either.

New graduates are hired by hospitals all the time, just not, as a general rule, in critical care units (ED, ICU, CCU, NICU...).

[jared herbert]

I have a wife and daughter that are both nurses, one for 35 years and the other for 2 years. Getting a job may take a little while if you are not willing to relocate, depending on where you are. There is a huge bubble of nurses age 50 to 65 that are on the verge of retirement. Then they will be the ones requiring more health care. There seems to be a generation of nurses, who should be in their 40s but they are just not there. This would coincide with the last real surplus of nurses, so no one went to nurses school about 20 years ago. It is a good proffession if you can stand the hours and the weekends. You are doing good for your fellow man and serving a useful purpose with your life. And working in a doctors clinic or nursing home will probably pay half or less than a hospital job. And neither of those jobs provide the necessary training to work in a hospital setting.

[Jerome Stanek]

My one daughter in law worked in a nursing home before she landed a job in a hospital. They liked it that she had experience working with older people. They tod her that was one of the main reasons she was hired.

[Doug Mason]

Here in the SF Bay Area nurses can make a great wage (albeit you might have to work nights & weekends). My mother recently retired as an RN from Kaiser in San Francisco, and, according to her, the competition for nursing jobs in this area is intense--and that Kaiser has hired few nurses in the last couple years. In addition, according to her, the wage scale vaies dramatically by region. So yes--if you're willing to move to Arkansaw to some small town you'll most likely find a job as an RN--albeit at a low wage.

[Phil Thien]

Thanks for all the feedback. It is interesting to me because, I've heard nothing but "nursing shortage, nursing shortage, nursing shortage" going on years now. So when my wife told me this young lady was having difficulty finding a position in a hospital I thought, "that makes no sense."

However, comments here, and other research, seems to indicate that the # of RN's grew by over 20% between 2000 and 2008. Here is an interesting post:

http://allnurses.com/general-nursing-discussion/nursing-shortage-myth-519604.html

So I suppose it is possible that there weren't enough nurses in 2000, and still weren't enough in 2008, but it clearly seems like there is significant growth.

[David Weaver]

A hospital might be one of the tougher places to get a job right now (at least comparatively - nursing homes and such places always seem to be hiring - sometimes because they pay less), just because a lot of community hospitals do not have large margins and often have a hiring freeze on. I'd imagine the same is true for larger networks, where they tinker with the workforce depending on conditions. That might mean no hiring for months and months, and then a glut of hiring later.

The demand should be there in the long run, though. Maybe as the delivery of care gets more fragmented, the demand of the hospitals themselves may not recover so much, even if the overall demand is strong.