Nurse Mentor

About this time of year emails start coming in from students about those who have gotten jobs after passing NCLEX-RN.  In the past few years, reports have shown anywhere from 5 to 8 months to get a job right out of school.  Students who moved out of their home training area were more likely to have a job in 5 months or less. Here's what I'm hearing from former students since graduation season: Most students have a job within 5 months of passing NCLEX with interviews often coming before the exam is taken.  This is a big change and may reflect what's going on with the implementation of the Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. Obamacare). New York, Philadephia, Boston, and San Francisco remain the toughest job markets for inexperienced nurses. Jobs are readily available in the US South, Midwest, and Southwest. Most students who have gotten a job in 3 months or less have moved to one of those areas of the country. Message: You might need to move to get that first job. Willingn...

Greetings from Coimbra, Portugal where I am attending the World Health Organization's (WHO) meeting of the Nursing and Midwifery Collaborating Centers . The purpose of the WHO-CC for Nursing and Midwifery is to  his network works toward the maximization of the contribution of nursing and midwifery in order to advance Health for All in partnership with WHO and its Member States, member centres, NGOs, and others interested in promoting the health of populations.  The network carries out advocacy and evidence based policy activities within the framework of WHA resolutions and the WHO programme of Work.   An impressive amount of work, research, and capacity building is completed by the Nursing & Midwifery centers. What's clear from this meeting is that the future of research in healthcare lies predominantly on the health workforce. We can develop lots of interventions, but if there are no health workers to implement them they will not matter nor be as effective as the r...

Recently I had lunch with a former student who was passing through town. Lisa graduated a little over two years ago and was one of the lucky ones who found a job fairly quickly. What was most interesting about our conversation was the turnover rate on her unit. In 15 months, 15 nurses have left. The most recent was a group of five experienced night shift nurses, the kind any manager is loathe to lose. They left, according to the student, because they were tired of how they were treated.  Lisa is now the most experienced person on night shift at two years out of school. The loss of 15 nurses on one unit has also cost the organization nearly a million dollars. In an era of cost tightening, that is a steep price. Acknowledging that this is only a report from one person, there is still something that rings true in her story: Well managed patient care units do not have high turnover rates of staff. So let's think about what constitutes turnover in nursing staff and it's causes. G...

The 2013 results are in!  Which US universities with research intensive nursing programs made the top ten in US National Institutes for Health Funding?  Here's the list: 1.  UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SAN FRANCISCO 2.  UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 3.  UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON 4.  JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY 5.  UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH AT PITTSBURGH 6.  NEW YORK UNIVERSITY 7.  UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES 8.  UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA 9.  UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND BALTIMORE 10.  EMORY UNIVERSITY So what does this mean? If you are a newly minted PhD or Post-Doc and you want to get your research career off the ground, applying for a job at one of those institutions will give you a good shot at developing your career. If you are looking for a PhD program or a Post-Doctoral Fellowship, one of those schools would probably be the best place to look for opportunities and mentoring.  Nursing schools in univer...

Welcome to 2014!  What does the new year have in store for you?  As you've figured out about US nursing by now, there are so many possibilities.  Maybe it's time for a career change?  To go back to school?  To move on from your current job into something else?  Hopefully a little mentoring can help you get there. Meanwhile, pat yourselves on the back again nurses.  In 2013, the US public voted nurses the most trusted of all the service professionals in the country, with 85% indicating high levels of trustworthiness and dedication to ethics.  This was our highest ranking ever!  So if you've had one of those days at work, take a moment to pat yourselves on the back. In the US, nurses are lucky enough to be held in such high esteem.  That's not the case in every country.  In fact, nursing is undergoing a transition around the world. Nurses are doing more in many countries due to personnel shortages.  You know what its like to...

The American Association of Colleges of Nursing is the organization that accredits baccalaureate nursing programs in the United States.  They do a really great job of ensuring that nursing education programs in the US produce the best possible graduates. They also track hiring patterns among new graduates.  Here are some key results from their most recent survey of May 2013 graduates: 59% of new BSN graduates had job offers at the time of graduation. At four to six months after graduation, the survey found that 89% of new BSN graduates had secured employment in nursing. The percentage of BSN graduates with job offers at graduation varied by region of the country, from 68% in the South, to 59% in the Midwest, to 50% in the Northeast, to 47% in the West. The job offer rate for new nurses at the 4-6 month mark also varied by region from 93% in the South, to 90% in the Midwest, to 82% in the Northeast and West. So what does this mean for you, December 2013 or May ...

OK nurse friends and colleagues, can you find your passion and have a greater impact than you already do? Go for it!   See this story for an example of how to get started.   Passionate nurses at every level, from the front lines everywhere to management and academia are what attracts people to our profession and taking advantage of the many career options available to nurses in the United States and many other countries.