Urgent care to ER or vice versa

Specialties Ambulatory

Published

I have a horrible work schedule in the ER that has me working different shifts all in the same week. So some weeks I'll have a mid-shift (11-11 or 1-1) and a day or night shift. Some weeks I'm on all day shifts. Some weeks are all night shifts. In one 8 days stretch I worked all 4 of the different shifts we have. It stinks to try to raise kids and bounce around like that, especially with a hubby that works night shift. Getting on day shift permanently will likely never happen for me unless there's a mass exodus from my department which I don't see happening. I'm not the youngest person and am low in seniority so I have a long time to go before day shift would open up and by then I'll be retiring. I'm looking also a fairly new grad (licensed about a year ago). I'm toying with going to urgent care for the better hours. I'm just not sure how I would like that because I'm used to the hectic and stressful pace of the ER. Has anyone ever gone from ER to urgent care or urgent care to ER? If so, any words of advice?

Specializes in Pediatrics Retired.

I don't know what type of Urgent Care you're looking at but I work pool at a busy pedi urgent care. I would not work there full or part time because I have kids and the Urgent Care hours are evening hours which habitually conflict with kid activities during the week, and on the weekends, since the evening hours expand to afternoon/evening. The work is less stressful than the ER in that it's mostly used as an after hours office clinic since 95% of the patients have medicaid, but your shift doesn't end until all the patients are gone; you can't hand off to the next shift.

I went to the Urgent Care two years ago from a busy ED. Felt guilty making the same amount of money. Still stay super busy, see emergent patients, but still get to spend a little bit extra time with patients. They are in and out faster which is nicer! You won't regret changing, you just have to find a busy one.

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