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Tackling the transition from new grad to RPN in style

After years working as a hair stylist, Janice Dryburgh felt the pull of a new calling.

After spending several years working as a hair stylist in a small town in Lon-don, Ontario, Janice Dryburgh says she began to feel something pulling her in another direction.

“I really enjoyed my job,” she says. “But I just started thinking that I was supposed to be doing something different with my life.”

More than a few people, including her husband, Mike, had made remarks over the years that they thought she ‘would have made a great nurse’. Those comments stayed with her. Deep down, she suspected that maybe these friends and family members were onto something. So, one day, Janice found herself sitting at her computer, re-searching nursing programs in the area.

Fast-forward to 2013. Janice has traded in her hair styling tools for the text-books, theory and clinical placements of the practical nursing program at Fanshawe College (Woodstock/Oxford Regional Campus). Looking back on the program, she says she was surprised by how demanding it was. “Compared to my experience at university, I found it much more demanding, personally,” she says. “I thought I would be able to work 30-plus hours a week but that just wasn’t the case. I was barely able to manage 12. That was one of the most surprising things to me – how demanding the program was on all of us.”

After graduating this past March and becoming fully registered in July, Jan-ice was fortunate enough to land a job fairly quickly on a Mother-Baby Care Unit in London. She recently started her training and says she’s both eager and nervous as she officially embarks on her career as a nurse.

“As much as I’m excited to have a job, I have to admit that I’m nervous about entering into a large organiza-tion,” she says. “It’s a big step. For me, I felt like up until this point when we’ve been at our placements, we could always say that we were a student nurse. That was kind of a security blanket I suppose. Now, I’m a nurse. But that transition from new grad

to nurse is something that all of us have to go through and I am looking forward to it.”

This past year, Janice also became in-volved with RPNAO, assuming the role of ex officio student board member on the association’s Board of Directors. While the student board member role does not entail voting privileges, it does provide students with representation on the board and, at the same time, provides those student board members with a glimpse of what it’s like to represent the profession at the provincial level.

“This has been a real eye-opening experience learning about the associa-tion and everything it does for RPNs,” Dryburgh says. “It’s really made a huge difference in the way I view the profession. I was already excited to be an RPN. I could see how much we could make a difference in the health care landscape in Ontario. But serving as a member of the board has allowed me to see hands-on how the association is working so hard to help everyone understand the role of the RPN and to advance RPN practice in the province.”

When asked about some of the more pressing issues or challenges facing new RPNs in the province today, Dry-burgh mentioned the general lack of access to full-time employment. “Most of the jobs that are out there today are part-time or casual positions,” she says. “I think I heard of one or two people from my class getting full-time positions. Some people are really frustrated by it. A full-time position for a new RPN is a bit of a rarity.”

Dryburgh says another area in which practical nursing students are experi-encing challenges these days has to do with clinical placements. “One of the biggest issues some students are having is around finding good placements for clinical placements and finding precep-tors to help us through that process,” she says. “I’m not sure if people are just not willing to be preceptors or if some of the organizations make it difficult to have students come in. But overall, this is a trend that is really affecting many practical nursing students.”

When asked about her advice for students and new grads to land that first job, she says that managing your expectations is really important. “You need to come to grips with the real-ity that most jobs are going to be part-time or casual,” she says. “Just be positive through the process. I spent a lot of time reviewing my skills so that I would always be ready for an interview. I asked other nurses about tips for interviewing. The job search and interview process was really a full-time job on its own.”

“It’s also important to lean on your group of cheerleaders to help get you through the process,” she says. “For me, that was my husband, my program coordinator, and friends and family. Each of them kept me ground-ed and kept encouraging me through-out the process and that really had such a positive impact.”

Janice Dryburgh (RPN) and Jennifer Black, program coordinator for practical nursing at Fanshawe’s Woodstock/Oxford Campus, conduct an oxygen therapy exercise. (above) Janice Dryburgh outside Fanshawe College’s Woodstock/Oxford Regional Campus in Woodstock, Ontario. Bryn Gladding Photos