Bay Area RN here! Recently spoke with the medsurg nurse manager for (big no name local hospital). She said they’ll hire nurses who graduated a year ago and have no nursing experience over nurses with experience in lower acuity settings, because it’s such a pain in the ass to retrain people who have the “wrong” experience.

When I was still in school the nurses at my clinical sites constantly told us to hold out for hospital jobs because taking a position in a snf / home health agency would guarantee that we’d never get hired in acute care, and that hospitals will hire travel nurses over local nurses with subacute experience. My entire cohort pushed hard for hospital jobs after graduation for this reason.