"Part of the problem is that Americans just plain do not want to do the work."

[Heddi]

26. I'm an RN. Hospitals don't hire new grads anymore

They will hire new grads only if they (the RN graduates) worked at the hospital while they were in school, but otherwise....no go. When I lived in Seattle (moved away in April), i'd always hear the Nursing Students talking about how they were weeks away from graduation and no prospects in sight, still working for Starbucks, not even nursing homes hiring.

And there IS a nursing shortage. School is hard to get into and hard to stay in. Very competitive and very hard subjects to master THEN pass the NCLEX (national licensing test). Hard stuff, and even harder when you don't have a job waiting for you.

I graduated nursing school in 2006. I was hired while I was in my senior year while doing my senior practicum in the ICU. I didn't work for the hospital, wasn't a CNA or anything like that. I started my orientation the week I graduated and was ready to hit the floor running a month later when I passed my NCLEX-RN.

Not like that anymore. It's hard to get hired as a new grad at a hospital, almost as competitive as getting into nursing school. And you don't have your pick of the litter of departments to work in---I started in ICU, but could have gone Oncology, ER, home health, med-surg...whatever. Now, you start in med-surg, not even telemetry is taking new grads, and hope that in 2 years you can get one of the coveted spots in tele. 2 years later maybe you can get a coveted spot in ER or ICU or something else.

Despite tons of research backing up the fact that more nurses = happier patients and healthier patients, the work loads get greater, and unless you're in a state like California that has minimum staffing ratios, you could be a new grad, 6 weeks of orientation under your belt caring for 10+ med/surg or tele patients all by yourself.

Nurses are the biggest money losers in the hospital. Between the salary and the benefits, hospitals know they have to hire us to keep running but don't want to. So they shaft staffing and staff as low as they can, leaving nurses overworked, no breaks, no lunches, on your feet for 12 hours straight and god yes, no unions, and if you complain there are 500 people anxious and hungry to take your spot and they'll be more than happy to let you go for the slightest transgression.

Nursing is hard. TONS of people want to do it. Nursing schools are turning away hundreds per school per quarter. Hospitals aren't hiring new grads.

The poster who suggested people dont' want to do the work sounds like a typical hospital administrator. Always willing to criticize those of us in the trenches, but I never see THEM in scrubs when 5 nurses call out sick and there's no CNA's. I never see THEM offering to help clean ass and answer call lights and pass out water. No, they just sit in their offices monday-friday, never past 430pm, all holidays and weekends off, making $90k+ a year, complaining about how those nurses have the NERRRRVE to get upset for not getting a single 30 minute break in a backbreaking 12 hour shift :-/

Fuck hospital administrators. Want to know who should be cut first when healthcare costs get too high? Prune from the top, kids. Prune from the top.

Hospitals can't survive without RN's. But I think they'd do pretty good without CEO COO CNO etc...