So, as you may have gathered from my silence, I didn't get an offer from new grad day. They called me back and explained that I didn't have a bachelor's degree and that's the tiebreaker they had to use because they had so few openings. Sigh.
So a few days later the department of nurse recruitment called me and asked me if I'd like to interview on the Neurosurgical ICU. Whoa. I had never thought of a critical care area as a new graduate, mainly because I was worried about not getting enough training since so many hospitals are so bottom-line oriented that they regularly give nurses too many patients and stop hiring nurses in a down economy. But this hospital's orientation seems to be top notch for this kind of department. I left the interview thinking I could really do it, and I loved the unit from what I saw.
I scheduled a time to shadow (today, later) and was offered the job!!! I asked for a few days to make up my mind and I am going to decide after shadowing - but I am 95 percent sure it's what I am going to do. I just want to give it the shadow time to make a thousand percent sure it's what I want. It's a 2 year commitment to the unit plus 6 months of orientation, which makes it a fairly significant decision. The schedule isn't completely what I wanted (4 days a week instead of 3 for the first year, but they have done research and found that new nurses achieve competency faster if they work 4 days a week as opposed to the typical nurse schedule of 3, for their first year). So it's for my own good for better training, etc, but it's more day care costs for us.
I loved it though - the high acuity, the types of patients, and I love the nurse manager I met with. We really seemed to get along.
I think I'm pretty sure I am going to do this. It's crazy that such a cool position just fell into my lap like this, it's been a good week!
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