relocating to AZ need info

[River]

I'm planning on moving to the central AZ area. Somewhere between Flaggstaff and the White Mountain area and I wanted to get some feed back from any nurses or ancillary staff that work in this area.

I have questions regarding payrates, step increases, cost of living, mandatory overtime, floating policies, morale of staff, benefits, nurse patient ratios, best places to work and scary places to stay way, way, away from. Actually any input would be great. I'm planning to either go into home health (prefer) or a med/surg unit.

I have 10 plus years in med/surg 34 bed unit acute care and 2 years in home health.

Thanks ahead of time for your help with this. God Bless

[GLAD2BNURSE]

I live in Tucson, too. The pay range for a new grad is between $21.50-$24/hr. Bicycling, and hiking are big things to do here in AZ. The housing market is like anywhere else I guess, and there are lots of nice places to rent . I see you've been doing some research-have you picked out an area of town yet or a hospital that sounds interesting?

A sad day for me only an LPN, I just want to express my pain writing to people who did not make fun off me, and helped with wathever they knew.I can't enjoy any of this as mentioned above. I just found out that the LPN's do not receive working visa or any tipe of visa. So........ I can say Good Bye to relocation. Suzzane made fun of me, saying that the only way to get to USA is to marry an american. Proabably she didn't know that I've been married for 15 going on 16 years this fall. I got my hopes high for nothing. Good luck and thak you to all.

[cardiacRN2006, ADN, RN]

I'm sorry to hear that... Good Luck to you in whatever comes your way!