” There’s a nursing shortage! You can get a job anywhere!”

“Everyone needs nurses!”

“You’ll get hired right out of graduation!”

LIES AND BLASPHEMY!!!!!!!!

I will graduate from my RN program in July, which I am very excited and happy about. However, then follows the problem of employment. I have been searching for a job for after graduation since January. I’ve filled out approximately 100 applications, and I have gotten 2 interviews. For one position I applied to, over 450 applicants were competing for 71 spots opening up this summer for New Graduate RNs. I hear similar horror stories from my friends at school, and from Alumni who graduated last year. A recent study on hiring of New Graduate RNs found that it took the average new graduate 3-9 months to find employment after they graduate, even when they begin hunting for jobs long before.

Icky, Icky, Icky.

They are telling us that there is a nursing shortage, and we are being prepared for the “silver tsunami”, aka the “Aging Baby Boomer Population” which will evidently cripple our existing healthcare system. Yet the craptacular economy has made hospitals tighten their budgets, which made them hire less “costly” new graduate RNs. The economy also made many nurses delay retirement and move from part-time to full-time employment as the money crunch set in, also decreasing potential spots for new nurses. The combination of these events leaves new graduates totally screwed.

Persistance, they tell us. Just keep applying.

My hands are already sore from filling out applications, and financial worries heckle me like unrelenting harpies as graduation looms and the school cuts us all loose. Unless I’m incredibly lucky and land a position, I may have to be like a RN I recently worked with. She graduated during a recession in the 80′s, and was unable to find employment after school. So she waited 6 years and was hired right off the bat. Problem solved! Wait several years for the recession to hopefully be over! Yes, I am being slightly flippant. Yet if you find me working at McDonalds with my shiny new BSN degree on the wall and the letters “RN” after my name, don’t be surprised. And with this economy I’ll be damned happy to have that job too.  At this point, I’m just hoping to be employed somewhere, anywhere, after I graduate, even if it is unrelated to my current studies.

And that is the story of why I have  a pinched nerve in my neck.

Fin!

Advertisement