It used to be a degree in the medical field pretty much guaranteed a job on graduation; but recently, with the economy, that's not always the case, especially for nurses who have always been in demand.
The struggling economy has put a strain on those looking to find work in medicine. Hospitals and doctor’s offices are cutting back and while it used to be easy to find work for a nurse, this year nursing graduates say that's just not the case.
"We started months and months and months ahead working on this process of putting our applications in and looking for jobs and they are hard to come by now," said Christy Moody, an Registered Nurse Graduate.
Moody was one of more than 40 nurses honored at the Lenoir Community College pinning ceremony.
She competed against more than 200 other applicants for a handful of positions at Lenoir Memorial Hospital, but it may not be the economy causing such competition.
"We kind of see famine or glutton, you know, we just don't have enough nurses or we have too many, and it's just a cycle about every 15 years," said Dr. Alexis Welch, Director of the LCC Nursing Program.
She says the cut backs started in larger cities back in 2008 and only recently reached rural places like Lenoir Memorial Hospital. She calls it "graying and staying."
"With the economic downturn of the stock market, nurses actually lost money and so they are working a little bit longer to recover what they lost. So they're not vacating positions for these new graduates to walk into positions," said Dr. Welch.
More than half of the graduating nurses at LCC say they have a job lined up. Welch says it might not be the one they wanted, but being patient could lead them to their dream job.
The nurses we spoke with seemed positive about their chances of finding a job. Their official graduation ceremony will be Thursday at 7 pm.
Email
Facebook
Google
Twitter
Favorites
More
Advertisement