Passed NCLEX in October and already feel like my license is at risk
Passed my NCLEX in October and I live in NY (Upper Westchester). My goal was always to work in a hospital out here, so I only applied to hospitals at first. By December I told myself if I still didn’t have a job, I’d finally apply to nursing homes/SNFs.
Well… I did, and I ended up getting multiple offers from nursing homes. I started at one and honestly I hate it. I’m on a long term/rehab unit where they only want RNs on rehab because the patients are more acute. I constantly feel like my license is at risk. My ratio is usually 23:1 and the pay honestly does not match the amount of responsibility we have.
One patient can literally just be there for a broken leg/rehab, while their roommate is actively septic and close to death. The acuity is all over the place and it feels unsafe sometimes.
The training/orientation was terrible too. It was basically just shadowing another nurse for a month and hoping situations came up so I could learn from them. There was no structured orientation at all. We do tons of wound treatments, and we even have trach patients with no respiratory therapist in the building. Post stroke pts, pts with traumatic spinal cord injuries, cancer pts, dementia pts, and the list goes on.
Since starting here I’ve applied to 50+ hospital jobs and all I get are rejection emails saying they moved forward with other applicants. I genuinely don’t know what to do anymore. This job is making me depressed at this point.
Has anyone else struggled this hard getting into a hospital as a new grad in NY/Westchester? Did anyone start in a nursing home first and eventually make it out? I just need advice or honestly even encouragement right now 😭