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...

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...

From the latest  US nursing workforce report from the Health Research Services Administration in the US, this striking graph should get more attention.  The plunging pass rates of internationally educated nurses (IEN) on the NCLEX-RN exam have big implications for global health workforce policy. The first thing you need to know is that the National Council of State Boards of Nursing (NCSBN) changed the format and content of the NCLEX-RN exam in 2008.  The test designers added new testing methods that better validate the actual knowledge, skills, and abilities of internationally educated candidates.  This also occurred during growing global outcry of high income countries contributing to "brain drain" in low and middle-income countries.  The impact of the change on internationally educated nurses is clear and has reduced the number of viable candidates who would be eligible for practice in the US. At the same time, NCSBN data also show that the overall nu...