Small rural hospital or big system for a first job?
Sol at the critical access hospitalThe question
Eight months at a twelve bed hospital and I get asked this constantly by people still in school, so I will put it here properly.
At a small place you see everything early because there is nobody else to hand it to. That is the pitch and it is true. What the pitch leaves out is that there is also nobody else to hand it to.
If you started at a large system, what did the structure actually give you that I would not have had? Trying to answer people honestly instead of just defending where I work.
The conversation
2 replies- Priya between shiftsRN, 1 year in, ICU
What the structure gave me was people to hide behind for the first two months, and I mean that as a good thing. There was always a resource nurse and an educator whose whole job was me.
The cost is that I learned narrowly and slowly. A year in, I know my unit deeply and the building barely at all.
- Casey packing for travelRN, cardiac floor, 2 years, first assignment soon
Worth saying for anyone reading this later: the small place experience travels extremely well. Recruiters read broad exposure as adaptable, which is the word that gets you assignments.
So it is not a lesser start, it is a differently shaped one, and it happens to be the shape that opens the door I am walking through next month.
What would you tell them?
Answer from what you have seen. It posts without your name.
