Census has been terrible

Winter is always slow if you are not in the deep south. Snow birds (elderly wanting warm weather) go south for the winter, and this slows things quite a bit for the northern and midwestern states.

CCU NRS - Sorry to say this... but you won't get unemployment. I used to be an accountant (still do some independant work), and I am very familiar with unemployment laws and stipulations. As long as the agency can prove that they called you for shifts and you turned them down, they are not liable for unemployment payments and will fight it tooth and nail (and win). Unemployment rules do state that the employer must provide reasonable accomadation, but as an agency nurse it is typically decided that because you were an "as needed" employee that there were no guarantees of work for a particular schedule and the fact that they offered nights and you turned them down negates your claim for unemployment. It's a nasty world when if comes to the unemployment battle, but 9 times out of 10 the agency is going to win. Simply put, when we hired on we were never guarenteed fulltime hours. It's first come first serve. Not to mention the fact that all the agency has to do is point to the countless ads for nurses in the paper and say "if X employee is not getting all the hours they need I don't think they will have a hard time finding a job... do you". Sucks, but that's unfortunately the way it works.

your census has been low also. I don't normally get called off to often and it has hurt right after christmas. I am waiting on a travel assignment at this time. Good luck.........

Census in Eastern Kansas has been unusually high for the last several months. I am getting offered 80+ hours a week right now. I am setting my limits at 60 though. Any more is just asking for trouble due to fatigue IMO. But I know several nurses right now doing 80 a week.... crazy!

I do agency in North Texas---the dry spell here was froom The beginning of November til just after Xmas..and I do mean dry dry dry. Having gotten so used to getting 36 hours a week and then some and being able to be picky about the days I wanted to work, it came as quite a blow to MAYBE getting a single 12 hr shift a week and then maybe 4 hrs here and there. Biggest problem was low census but also that a local hospital has an inhouse agency and they shut out all other agencies from the shifts. So I finally signed up for the inhouse agency out of desperation and also agreed to do contract work and now once again the hours are available to a point where I am having to turn shifts down out of exhaustion...but that dry spell was horrible..worst I have seen in years!

Census is back up in Denver.... whew!!! that was a long and painful dry spell!

Of course you don't have any patients. They are all here in sunny Florida. We could really use the help in the winter! I spoke with a ER nurse yesterday while taking report and she said they have had patients waiting for beds for 2 days! People on vents in the ER waiting for ICU beds too. We have 800+ plus beds in my hospital and not enough nurses. So many hospitals offer seasonal contracts too paying 32-35/hr for floor nurses. Most are 12-18 wk contracts.. Anyway..."ya'll" come on down!

We have stretches like yours too, Tinkertots, where ER is busting with vent/ICU patients cuz all our beds are filled to capacity... there is literally nowhere to put them. Doncha hate playing musical beds all shift long....when the medsurg patients get discharged everyone gets transferred down a notch. Sometimes this is all the day nurses do, and administration can't understand why this transferring, discharging cycle takes so much of their time. <sigh> Another reason to love nights as we get less of this.

Recently a corporate buy out resulted in closure of several hospitals in my area which is behind this bed shortage at peak times of the year. But then of course we have our 'dry spells' too.

My hubby wants to visit Florida again so I may indeed 'travel nurse' there in the future!