Nursing grads stumble while searching for work in weak economy

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By Kristian Ekenes

Twins Kelsey and Kazia Wetzel are identical in more ways than one. They played the same sports in high school, have the same friends and studied the same major at BYU. After submitting more than 800 job applications in 10 months, they find themselves in another identical situation they wish they weren’t in — they’re still unemployed.

“Applying for jobs is our job now,” Kazia Wetzel said. “We spend hours a day doing it. It’s a little embarrassing to tell people we’re still looking for work.”

It’s embarrassing because the Wetzel sisters graduated in nursing, a field typically known for its high demand for new graduates.

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Christi Cooper demonstrates proper nursing practices with fellow student Camille Woodward in the Nursing School at BYU.

“It’s probably the most frustrating thing that’s ever happened to us,” Kelsey Wetzel said.

Statistics show Utah residents are having fewer babies and forgoing elective surgeries in an apparent effort to ease financial burdens. This decline in health care expenditures coupled with other economic stresses on nurses currently in the workforce is keeping many nursing graduates in Utah from finding employment in hospitals. More graduates have resorted to making their living working in nursing homes and as home health nurses to weather the economic storm.

Fewer Children, More Working Mothers

In 2009, the number of Utah births declined by more than 1,700 from the previous year. Despite a consistently growing population, that year marked the first decrease in Utah births since 1993. This decrease eventually led to a sudden drop in demand for pediatric nursing jobs while the number of nursing graduates has been on the rise over the past few years.

This would seem to indicate that Utah belies a current nationwide nursing shortage.

“It’s not that there’s a nursing shortage,” said Marianne Craven, interim director of nursing programs at Utah Valley University. “Those already in the workforce pick up the slack.”

After having children, many full-time nurses in Utah opt to work part-time or not at all. When the economy started to deteriorate in 2008, many part-time and on-call nurses at UVRMC requested to work extra shifts. With a 7.6 percent unemployment rate in Utah, many experienced registered nurses previously not working re-entered the workforce to provide a more stable financial situation for their families, thus filling many positions UVRMC would have awarded to less experienced nursing graduates.

“The part-time mom used to work as needed,” said Lisa Palleta, nurse administrator at Utah Valley Regional Medical Center. “Now she works two to three times a week, because maybe her husband isn’t working anymore.” 

Hard Times for New Graduates

Experienced nurses aren’t the only ones feeling stress from the poor economy. Recently graduated nurses also feel pressure to help support their spouses and children.

When nursing graduates compete with experienced RNs for the same jobs, hospitals tend to hire experience over inexperience. With an average of more than 40 applicants per job posting, UVRMC is forced to weed out more nurses than it did before 2008, when it had three to five applicants per posting.

“We’re definitely in a position to be more selective,” Palleta said.

Even though nursing grads have had difficulty finding work over the past couple years, UVRMC has hired 99 new-grad nurses in 2011. That may seem like a substantial number at first glance, but taking into account the more than 2,400 students who graduated from 13 accredited Utah nursing schools in 2010 and 2011, that number doesn’t look so big.

While some nursing graduates and professors have a grim outlook on the availability of jobs, Beth Cole, dean of the BYU School of Nursing, is optimistic that new graduates can find work.

Cole acknowledged that before the recession began in 2008, it was much easier for nursing graduates to find work in any specialty they wanted, such as labor and delivery, pediatrics, intensive care or the ER.

“Now it’s more difficult for them to find the jobs they want,” Cole said.

Cole said a survey of BYU’s nursing graduates in July 2011 indicated that many graduates could find work, just not the jobs they desired, many of which are in pediatrics. While local hospitals have had a recent upswing in ER visits, elective surgeries and intensive care, pediatric jobs are still hard to come by.

Resorting to Nursing Homes and Private Care

Many new RNs would prefer working in any hospital job, regardless of the specialty.

“I feel like the hospitals just cut you out of the running if you’re a new graduate,” said Bethany Cudahy, who graduated in nursing from BYU in December 2010.

After applying for more than 50 hospital jobs, Cudahy resorted to applying to nursing homes. After several more applications and interviews, she was offered a job at Orem Rehabilitation and Skilled Nursing.

Others have resorted to working as home health or private nurses. After graduating from BYU’s School of Nursing in 2007, Gina Bourgeous departed on a mission to Korea with the expectation that she would easily find a hospital job after returning home. Upon arrival back to the U.S., however, she found herself in the middle of the struggling economy. While applying to nearly 100 jobs, Bourgeous often got rejected because of her lack of experience.

Frustrated, she would think to herself, “I’m trying to get experience. Somebody’s got to give me a chance.”

She did get a chance, but not from a hospital. Maxim Healthcare Services hired her as a private duty nurse, where she has been taking care of patients in their homes for more than a year. While she’s grateful to be employed, she is still on the lookout for a job that offers better benefits and utilizes more of her skills.

Although recent graduates have had more difficulty finding jobs in the past couple years, many current BYU nursing students are confident they will find work soon after graduation.

Kristi Cooper, a senior studying nursing at BYU, said she’s well aware of the current competitive nature of nursing jobs. To make herself more marketable after graduation, she has accrued three years of experience working as a certified nursing assistant at Intermountain Healthcare.

Nursing administrators and professors acknowledged that working as a CNA or LPN during nursing school gives new RNs an edge in the application process because they “know the system” of hospitals better than inexperienced RNs.

While it is more difficult for new nurses to find the jobs they want now, the U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics projects nursing will be among the fastest growing occupations within the next 10 years, mainly because the baby-boomer population will be demanding more health care.

But as one of the 3,800 registered nurses in Utah without a job, Kazia Wetzel is concerned more about the present.

“I have no doubt that it will swing back,” she said. “We’re just in a low right now. What I yearn for is for someone to give me a chance.”

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