I was talking with a friend of mine who is a registered nurse first assistant (RNFA). That means she is an RN who can first assist in the OR. A lot of hospitals use them instead of PAs or residents.
She spends most of her time as an OR nurse and a little time as a first assist.
Let’s call her Amy. Amy is starting to look for a new job. Nothing terrible, she’s just starting to get a little fed up where she’s been and the position she’s in. Pretty normal stuff.
We were talking the other day and she started downplaying her experience. Most of her first assisting experience is in one specialty. So she was telling me how she isn’t a good candidate for a hospital position because she isn’t well rounded enough. I started laughing.
As an OR nurse, she scrubs in for everything, from ENT to plastics to GYN to ortho to whatever. Amy’s been an OR nurse for probably 15 years.
Why doesn’t she think that’s valuable experience for a RNFA to have? We are so stuck in the idea that only very specific experience is relevant. We don’t wait for someone else to tell us no, we close ourselves right out.
So I enlightened her – on her resume and cover letter, there is no need to separate the RNFA and the OR RN experience.
OR Nurse and RNFA from 2002-2017 at XYZ hospital. In this position I scrub in and first assist on a wide variety of cases.
Is that a false statement? Nope
Is it misleading? Nope
Is she lying or saying she has skills she doesn’t have? Nope.
There’s a great episode of Friends where Joey is working on his resume with Phoebe, and it’s coming up a bit thin. So they start making up things he can do. Guitar playing… Sounds good. Oh, what about horseback riding? Yeah, yeah. That’s great.
Lying about your skills is a terrible idea. It made for a very funny show, but you don’t want to be put into a bad situation.
Framing is the word you need to learn. Framing is simply how you present the facts. You want to present them in a way that makes you look good, not in a way that makes you look bad. You’re not even stretching the truth here. You’re just showing how you bring value to the team, to the position.
Do you think a decade of experience as a multi-specialty scrub nurse has any value to Amy’s career as a first assistant?????
I wouldn’t downplay it. I would put it right up at the top of the reasons she IS qualified. Don’t look for the reason you’re NOT good enough. Look at all the reasons you ARE! In this case, and often times, they are the same. It’s just how YOU frame it.
Amy’s resume shows all of her amazing multi-specialty experience. That gets her in the door. During the interview, she fully expects to be asked about her specific first-assist experience, and this is where she can shine. Because she is expecting it.
“As a scrub nurse for 15 years, I’ve gotten experience in hundreds of different cases and with hundreds of different docs. I’m comfortable in any room. That experience has also transferred really well to my work as an RNFA. I’ve spent 10 years as an RNFA working mostly in ZZZ, but the great part is that since I scrub for so many different kinds of cases as an RN, I’m comfortable in just about any surgery.”
From there, if you’re a good person with decent interview skills, you should have no problem. If they want you on the team, you’ve given them a way to overlook what you believe are your shortcomings.
The same thing applies if you fail your exam and don’t work after school for a few months. You need to frame that period the right way. You don’t walk in with your head down and say, “Well, I failed the exam so I couldn’t work for 3 months.” That doesn’t go on your resume. You do something anything during that time that makes it your choice not to work as a PA.
“Oh, that three month gap? I was traveling through the Antarctic, tracking down the poachers and saving whales from being hunted to extinction. I knew that once I started my career, I would never get the opportunity to do that again, so I took a few months before applying for a job. Thankfully, I’d saved enough money so I could take a little time off before starting my career. Now I’m totally refreshed, and I can’t wait to get started.”
Doesn’t that sound a bit better than “I failed my test, so I sat and cried and studied and now I passed and I hope you give me a job.”
It’s all about framing.
Of course, if you don’t want to be in that position, you should try using The Final Step. It’s helped thousands of people get (and keep) their “C” on the first try.
Brian Wallace