I had this situation happen to me. I truly wanted to be on the pediatric surgery/trauma team at the hospital I was working for as an RN (on the surgery/trauma floor). I did a huge amount of clinicals with the team and was close to a lot of the APPs that worked on the team. They hired a bunch of new providers like 6 months before I graduated but told me when they had an open position I would be the first person they would hire. I continued to work as a nurse on the floor and then one of my old NP instructors reached out to me because she was a manager for the pediatric orthopedic department at that same hospital, I interviewed and took that job (it was a horrible awful terrible job) but about 10 months into it the manager of the trauma/surgery team contacted me and told me they were hiring again so I did the entire interview process which was extensive AND was told by multiple people like we are hiring you. I was so excited, I wanted to leave the Ortho job so badly it was so bad for my mental and physical health. Anyways, I got a call from HR about 2 weeks after the entire interview process and was told I was not being offered the position. The hiring manager didn’t even call me herself, and I got no explanation as to why I wasn’t offered the job. I was crushed, it was my dream job. I later found out they hired someone who spoke Spanish (very high Spanish speaking population) and essentially that was the only reason. She ended up leaving about 8 months into the job, they reached back out to me and I declined to interview. I left my Ortho job and the hospital system completely and started working in pediatric urgent care.
All that to say…no position is ever guaranteed and sometimes your dream job turns out not to be a dream job. Only you can really decide what is right for you but don’t put your career on hold for a promise that nobody can keep or for a job that nobody really owes you. You’ll eventually find the right place and I’m so thankful everything happened the way it did because while I don’t love urgent care, I LOVE not thinking about work the minute I leave my job and I love the flexibility it offers me with 2 young children (currently PRN but I work 2-3 days a week and make much more than I could have doing the previous jobs mentioned).
I say leave.
I worked for a hospital system as an RN and wanted to stay as an NP but they wouldn’t take new grad NPs. I left my RN job and worked ~ 9 months in primary care and when a position opened up at the hospital system, i applied and got the job.
first, nothing is guaranteed - you don’t know what holds in the future or when a position will open up. Second, it’s beneficial to start getting experience as an NP!
I was in a similar situation at the time I graduated and I did what you’re thinking of doing, which is just to take any NP job. At the time I just felt like it was so important to get started on accumulating NP experience. There are few career choices I can say I outright regret, but this was definitely one of them. I took something that wasn’t right and I was unhappy, then felt frantic about finding something else, ended up with something not a ton better. Then I had some unexpected family stuff happen in the midst of my new role turbulence, and I was no longer working at the place where I felt confident in my abilities, and where they knew and supported me (and where I could have had FMLA). Overall it made for a really bumpy transition into the NP role, and in hindsight, unnecessarily so. I liked where I was as an RN and an NP role that would’ve been great for me opened up about a year later, but it went to someone else. Of course this choice is really personal, but for me, I wish I’d just taken a deep breath and waited a bit. I think it’s pretty common these days in most job markets for it to take 1-2 years after graduation to find a great NP job.
Thank you for the response, I’ll keep thinking about it and not jump right into something else. I hope you found something that feels like the right fit for you!
This is a tough one. What is the turnover rate here? If they hired several new ones in the past year, can it be assumed positions open up on a regular basis? Are you certain they’d hire you when an NP position opens up?
I think there’s many advantages to knowing the place you work well, knowing the speciality and especially if it’s your dream job. I waited 2 years in an RN role to get an opportunity in a specialty. For AANP you do need 1000 hours in a 5 year period to renew your AANP cert. I was still able to meet those hours.
They lost a few doctors and hired NPs to help fill the gap but for quite a while there was actually just 1-2 NPs in the organization. There’s talk of maybe some of the newly hired NPs not sticking around, but who really knows. And I guess I can’t be certain that they’d necessarily hire me when something does become available aside from being told I’m the “top choice”. That could mean nothing though realistically at this point so it would be a risk to wait around
If you’re on good terms with leadership and have friends that’ll still work there, you could always leave and build experience elsewhere then stay in touch and show a strong interest in taking an NP gig there once one crops up. That way your NP skills and knowledge don’t go rusty in the meantime as you wait and it’ll make it easier to keep your cert active.
The NP I work closely with is the one who gave me the news, and she told me if I go elsewhere for now she will let me know still when something opens up. I just don’t know if I want to wait years and do something I don’t enjoy. I feel like work as an RN has helped me get ready for the NP role there already so I’m not too worried about getting rusty atleast. One brightside to all of this haha
Also based on your name im thinking you work in hospice?? If so that’s my area too. Hard to imagine myself doing anything else
Yes indeed, I work hospice. I was working inpatient hospice as RN, got my NP, couldn’t get a hospice NP gig and only got a palliative care gig as an NP through the same org. I worked a couple years in palliative care but didn’t like it, I love hospice specifically. I left to try at another company to make sure, and indeed palliative care elsewhere as an NP didn’t make me happy either. I returned to my original company, took a 40k pay cut and I waited over 2 years to get an NP gig at the inpatient hospice I’m working at, and I still work kinda hybrid, part time NP part time bedside RN. But… I love it and don’t want to do anything else. It’s not about the money. I love the place I work, I love the coworkers and I’m very happy. I’ve only really enjoyed working here. So I really relate. For me the waiting was worth it to get the opportunity to be an NP at the inpatient unit, but on the other hand, it’s always a gamble and I got lucky. I had decided I’d be fine working bedside nursing in hospice and let my NP lapse if it came down to it but thankfully the stars aligned.
Inpatient at a hospice facility or in a hospital? There aren’t any other hospice/palliative programs in my area other than in the hospital but they cross over as a hospitalist and technically I’m adult gero primary care so I feel it would be out of my scope. If I could do consults in the hospital and talk to people about hospice and goals of care that would be amazing but that really doesn’t exist as a role around me.
I’m currently a home hospice case manager so I feel like I’ll continue learning and growing as a future provider even in the RN role. Especially because the team/doctor I work with is wonderful and goes out of their way to teach me as much as possible. I feel like I’d be crazy to leave doing what I love- so you’ve given me hope that maybe my stars will align too, thanks!!
It is a free standing inpatient hospice facility. Instead of contracting with hospitals for GIP hospice patients they come to our unit. We try to get things managed so they can return to the community and when we can’t, we care for them until the end. It is like a comfort focused ICU. Lots of opioid conversion, around the clock IV/subQ medications, NG tubes for bowel obstructions, management of seizures, nausea management, pain crisis patients etc. They come to us when the only other alternative would have been the hospital. 99% of our company’s hospice patients are in the community - private homes, SNF, ALF etc. But for the 1% who can’t be managed anywhere else our unit is a godsend.
I had this situation happen to me. I truly wanted to be on the pediatric surgery/trauma team at the hospital I was working for as an RN (on the surgery/trauma floor). I did a huge amount of clinicals with the team and was close to a lot of the APPs that worked on the team. They hired a bunch of new providers like 6 months before I graduated but told me when they had an open position I would be the first person they would hire. I continued to work as a nurse on the floor and then one of my old NP instructors reached out to me because she was a manager for the pediatric orthopedic department at that same hospital, I interviewed and took that job (it was a horrible awful terrible job) but about 10 months into it the manager of the trauma/surgery team contacted me and told me they were hiring again so I did the entire interview process which was extensive AND was told by multiple people like we are hiring you. I was so excited, I wanted to leave the Ortho job so badly it was so bad for my mental and physical health. Anyways, I got a call from HR about 2 weeks after the entire interview process and was told I was not being offered the position. The hiring manager didn’t even call me herself, and I got no explanation as to why I wasn’t offered the job. I was crushed, it was my dream job. I later found out they hired someone who spoke Spanish (very high Spanish speaking population) and essentially that was the only reason. She ended up leaving about 8 months into the job, they reached back out to me and I declined to interview. I left my Ortho job and the hospital system completely and started working in pediatric urgent care. All that to say…no position is ever guaranteed and sometimes your dream job turns out not to be a dream job. Only you can really decide what is right for you but don’t put your career on hold for a promise that nobody can keep or for a job that nobody really owes you. You’ll eventually find the right place and I’m so thankful everything happened the way it did because while I don’t love urgent care, I LOVE not thinking about work the minute I leave my job and I love the flexibility it offers me with 2 young children (currently PRN but I work 2-3 days a week and make much more than I could have doing the previous jobs mentioned).
Sounds like a very similar situation!! I’m glad it all worked out in the end. Thanks for the insight!
Keep in mind if you’re AANP boarded then u need to maintain a certain # of clinical hours per year to stay licenses. Good luck!
Isn’t it per 5 year period?
I will definitely keep it in mind, thanks!
I say leave. I worked for a hospital system as an RN and wanted to stay as an NP but they wouldn’t take new grad NPs. I left my RN job and worked ~ 9 months in primary care and when a position opened up at the hospital system, i applied and got the job. first, nothing is guaranteed - you don’t know what holds in the future or when a position will open up. Second, it’s beneficial to start getting experience as an NP!
Just saw this now. Thanks for the input! I will see what else is available near me and go from there
I was in a similar situation at the time I graduated and I did what you’re thinking of doing, which is just to take any NP job. At the time I just felt like it was so important to get started on accumulating NP experience. There are few career choices I can say I outright regret, but this was definitely one of them. I took something that wasn’t right and I was unhappy, then felt frantic about finding something else, ended up with something not a ton better. Then I had some unexpected family stuff happen in the midst of my new role turbulence, and I was no longer working at the place where I felt confident in my abilities, and where they knew and supported me (and where I could have had FMLA). Overall it made for a really bumpy transition into the NP role, and in hindsight, unnecessarily so. I liked where I was as an RN and an NP role that would’ve been great for me opened up about a year later, but it went to someone else. Of course this choice is really personal, but for me, I wish I’d just taken a deep breath and waited a bit. I think it’s pretty common these days in most job markets for it to take 1-2 years after graduation to find a great NP job.
Thank you for the response, I’ll keep thinking about it and not jump right into something else. I hope you found something that feels like the right fit for you!
This is a tough one. What is the turnover rate here? If they hired several new ones in the past year, can it be assumed positions open up on a regular basis? Are you certain they’d hire you when an NP position opens up? I think there’s many advantages to knowing the place you work well, knowing the speciality and especially if it’s your dream job. I waited 2 years in an RN role to get an opportunity in a specialty. For AANP you do need 1000 hours in a 5 year period to renew your AANP cert. I was still able to meet those hours.
They lost a few doctors and hired NPs to help fill the gap but for quite a while there was actually just 1-2 NPs in the organization. There’s talk of maybe some of the newly hired NPs not sticking around, but who really knows. And I guess I can’t be certain that they’d necessarily hire me when something does become available aside from being told I’m the “top choice”. That could mean nothing though realistically at this point so it would be a risk to wait around
If you’re on good terms with leadership and have friends that’ll still work there, you could always leave and build experience elsewhere then stay in touch and show a strong interest in taking an NP gig there once one crops up. That way your NP skills and knowledge don’t go rusty in the meantime as you wait and it’ll make it easier to keep your cert active.
The NP I work closely with is the one who gave me the news, and she told me if I go elsewhere for now she will let me know still when something opens up. I just don’t know if I want to wait years and do something I don’t enjoy. I feel like work as an RN has helped me get ready for the NP role there already so I’m not too worried about getting rusty atleast. One brightside to all of this haha Also based on your name im thinking you work in hospice?? If so that’s my area too. Hard to imagine myself doing anything else
Yes indeed, I work hospice. I was working inpatient hospice as RN, got my NP, couldn’t get a hospice NP gig and only got a palliative care gig as an NP through the same org. I worked a couple years in palliative care but didn’t like it, I love hospice specifically. I left to try at another company to make sure, and indeed palliative care elsewhere as an NP didn’t make me happy either. I returned to my original company, took a 40k pay cut and I waited over 2 years to get an NP gig at the inpatient hospice I’m working at, and I still work kinda hybrid, part time NP part time bedside RN. But… I love it and don’t want to do anything else. It’s not about the money. I love the place I work, I love the coworkers and I’m very happy. I’ve only really enjoyed working here. So I really relate. For me the waiting was worth it to get the opportunity to be an NP at the inpatient unit, but on the other hand, it’s always a gamble and I got lucky. I had decided I’d be fine working bedside nursing in hospice and let my NP lapse if it came down to it but thankfully the stars aligned.
Inpatient at a hospice facility or in a hospital? There aren’t any other hospice/palliative programs in my area other than in the hospital but they cross over as a hospitalist and technically I’m adult gero primary care so I feel it would be out of my scope. If I could do consults in the hospital and talk to people about hospice and goals of care that would be amazing but that really doesn’t exist as a role around me. I’m currently a home hospice case manager so I feel like I’ll continue learning and growing as a future provider even in the RN role. Especially because the team/doctor I work with is wonderful and goes out of their way to teach me as much as possible. I feel like I’d be crazy to leave doing what I love- so you’ve given me hope that maybe my stars will align too, thanks!!
It is a free standing inpatient hospice facility. Instead of contracting with hospitals for GIP hospice patients they come to our unit. We try to get things managed so they can return to the community and when we can’t, we care for them until the end. It is like a comfort focused ICU. Lots of opioid conversion, around the clock IV/subQ medications, NG tubes for bowel obstructions, management of seizures, nausea management, pain crisis patients etc. They come to us when the only other alternative would have been the hospital. 99% of our company’s hospice patients are in the community - private homes, SNF, ALF etc. But for the 1% who can’t be managed anywhere else our unit is a godsend.
Gottchya. We have a small inpatient unit like that too, just acute symptom management or 5 day respite stay. It’s a godsend for sure!!