Nursing Grads – More schooling may help to land jobs

The health care industry has been an employment bright spot in Sacramento and across the country as demand grows to care for a graying population.

But newly minted nursing graduates are having trouble squaring that good news with their difficulties in finding work, said Anne McNamara.

McNamara, dean of Grand Canyon University’s College of Nursing in Phoenix, and a registered nurse, was a keynote speaker at the California Nurse Leaders conference in Sacramento in September and talked recently with Job Front.

The answer, McNamara said, could be more classroom time.

Nursing graduates coming out of an associate’s degree program are struggling in the job market, she said.

“The difference is employers are are seeking nurses with a B.A.,” she said.

That means a bigger investment of time and money, but it is also a chance for nursing students to think more strategically about the health care market and their place in it.

The nursing students working their way through college may have no health care- related job while at school, McNamara said, but, by their senior year, they should be connected to a health care system.

“They should be very assertive. Look at the movement toward long-term care and assisted living,” McNamara said. “I tell graduates, ‘Your first job may not be saving lives in the emergency room.’ “…

Choosen excerpts by JMM from

via Job Front: More schooling may help new nursing grads land jobs – Job Front – The Sacramento Bee.