moving to melbourne FL

cursinnursin · Jun 2, 2006

Welcome to Melbourne. I work at HRMC on the Cardiac floor and boy is the hospital changing. In September we will be opening our new 8 floor north wing of our hospital and many of the old units will be moving over, then it will be to renovate the older area. Holmes is a fantastic hospital to work at and there are two other hospital in the immedicate area that are part of the Health First organization so you can try out different areas if you want to. We are undergoing a lot change and need outsiders to help make suggestions.

Melbourne is the largest (for another few weeks then Palm Bay will be larger) city in Brevard County and boy are we growing. The average price for a 3br/2ba home is $200,000 but seems to be holding pretty steady as the real estate market slows down. If you have children Brevard County has some of the finest schools in the state. They may not look pretty but they teach well. Melbourne is still somewhat of a small town but has the advantage of a beach right next to it. My husband and I came from Phoenix ( a huge city) and it is very foreign for us to see gas stations and grocery stores close in the evening, we are used to 24 hour shopping.

I wish you luck with your move. Remember to pack your batteries and hurricane supplies because hurricane season just started yesterday. Unfortunately, we have had a rough two years with hurricanes, but most of the time it is beautiful here.

bisayaispisyal · Jun 3, 2006

thank you soooo much for your reply! finally! an answer to my questions... and to think you also work at HRMC, what a coincidence! this is really great info. do appreciate it a lot.

my husband and i are both nurses and will soon be working at HRMC too. we might be there before august so i guess we will be in time for the opening of the new wing. sounds pretty exciting. we still dont know the area where we will be assigned. im hoping it will be med-surg because that is what i have been doing here in the philippines. by the way, when you first signed up with HRMC, did you get a sign in bonus? just wanna know because we have an agency here who processed everything for us and they said that the hospital doesnt give sign in bonuses.

yeah, hurricane season just started. and that scares the hell out of me! i see everything that happens on the news and i cant imagine myself in that situation. although we have typhoons and storms here in my country, i dont know if its the same. geeez...not to mention the crocs there! hehehe...are there any in melbourne? as to the cost of houses, im not very familiar if the rate you gave me is average or expensive..how much are apartments (say, 2 bedrooms) usually? our agency arranged an apartment for us to stay at first and they advised us to prepare at least 650$ for rent. i like the fact that melbourne is a "quiet city". nice place to raise kids i guess. we dont have kids yet but are planning to have them when we get there.

thanks again and have a great day!!!

suehp · Jun 4, 2006

HI, I dont work at Holmes Regional but work in Vero Beach at IRMH. Just to let you know that even though I dont work there I have heard that it is a good hospital:nurse:

bisayaispisyal · Jun 4, 2006

HI, I dont work at Holmes Regional but work in Vero Beach at IRMH. Just to let you know that even though I dont work there I have heard that it is a good hospital:nurse:

hi sue!

how far is vero beach from melbourne? is that still in brevard?

thanks for the positive feedback on HRMC! do need all the "pep talk" before our big move in...

:mad:

suehp · Jun 5, 2006

hi sue!
how far is vero beach from melbourne? is that still in brevard?
thanks for the positive feedback on HRMC! do need all the "pep talk" before our big move in...

Vero Beach is about 30 miles south of Melbourne - takes us about 25-30 minutes to get there. It is in Indian River county. I just know that IRMH (Indian River Memorial) isnt a Level one hospital and that any trauma's go to Melbourne. (I have recently started on the Ortho Unit in IRMH) and hear Holmes get mentioned a lot!

bisayaispisyal · Jun 5, 2006

good thing u mentioned the travel time. in my country, most of us dont really have a good grasp on how near or far a place is if you base it by miles/kms. we base the distance on time which i know isnt really reliable coz of a lot of factors. weird huh? anyhow, i understand u just moved from UK? how is it so far?

suehp · Jun 5, 2006

good thing u mentioned the travel time. in my country, most of us dont really have a good grasp on how near or far a place is if you base it by miles/kms. we base the distance on time which i know isnt really reliable coz of a lot of factors. weird huh? anyhow, i understand u just moved from UK? how is it so far?

I have been here 7 months now and my first job didnt work out....not a good place to start and pt workload was dangerously high....felt I was putting my License at risk. the good thing that came out of that 5 months experiance was I made a lot of friends there and keep in touch with a lot of the night staff (that was the shift I was on) in fact we met for breakfast this morning.

Now I have another job and have only been there a short while and just about to finish orientation this week as I was off for almost 3 weeks after breaking my arm...so I have had extra orientation to give my arm chance to get some of its strength back...so far so good....I am cautiously optimistic as my first experience wasnt so pleasent so dont want to jinx it!! Thanks for asking!

bisayaispisyal · Jun 5, 2006

thanks for sharing your story. i hope your arm is better now. and i extra hope that this job will be much much better than the first one! by the way, didnt you have a contract with the first one considering that you only worked for 5 months?

from what you said, it must be easy to look for a nursing job coz you found one almost right away. we have a 3 year contract with the hospital. and if anything goes wrong or a problem comes up with the hospital, (and i hope not) this will be a looong year for us. or can we terminate it if there is just cause?

cursinnursin · Jun 5, 2006

The price you were quoted for the apartment may be fairly accurate. You can get a nice apartment for about $650-850. Melbourne is where the hospitall is located and there are a wide range of choice of where to live. Beachside, the city, etc.

Melbourne is the main city and it is beautiful. The nice part about living here is that traffic is not terrible. My husband works ten miles from home and it never takes him more than 15 minutes to get home and that's one the freeway. Also, it only takes us an hour and fifteen minutes to get from our door to the parking lot at Universal Studios in Orlando, so you have easy access to the theme parks. We love it.

I was not offerend a sign on bonus but many of the hospitals in Orlando offer them.

All things considered I have lived in Florida for ten years and only in the last two years have the hurricanes even been a concern. The alligators are around but typically if you don't bother them during mating season or their nest you are okay. The worst thing is "love bugs", they can ruin the paint job on your car and they are everywhere. Overall, the environment in Floirda is beautiful. It is a breezy 84 degrees with blue skies. You will love it.

suehp · Jun 5, 2006

thanks for sharing your story. i hope your arm is better now. and i extra hope that this job will be much much better than the first one! by the way, didnt you have a contract with the first one considering that you only worked for 5 months?
from what you said, it must be easy to look for a nursing job coz you found one almost right away. we have a 3 year contract with the hospital. and if anything goes wrong or a problem comes up with the hospital, (and i hope not) this will be a looong year for us. or can we terminate it if there is just cause?

My situation is a bit complicated but the short story is I had a contract of sorts for 2 years and have to pay back a recruitment assistance fee. ($5000) As I say it is a bit more complicated and too long a story to go into here!

bisayaispisyal · Jun 7, 2006

The price you were quoted for the apartment may be fairly accurate. You can get a nice apartment for about $650-850. Melbourne is where the hospitall is located and there are a wide range of choice of where to live. Beachside, the city, etc.
Melbourne is the main city and it is beautiful. The nice part about living here is that traffic is not terrible. My husband works ten miles from home and it never takes him more than 15 minutes to get home and that's one the freeway. Also, it only takes us an hour and fifteen minutes to get from our door to the parking lot at Universal Studios in Orlando, so you have easy access to the theme parks. We love it.
I was not offerend a sign on bonus but many of the hospitals in Orlando offer them.
All things considered I have lived in Florida for ten years and only in the last two years have the hurricanes even been a concern. The alligators are around but typically if you don't bother them during mating season or their nest you are okay. The worst thing is "love bugs", they can ruin the paint job on your car and they are everywhere. Overall, the environment in Floirda is beautiful. It is a breezy 84 degrees with blue skies. You will love it.

thank you for your reply. i just found out that we will be migrating in one month's time. funny how time seems to stand still while you're still waiting and now that we know the date, it all seems to be rushing by so fast!

i am quite pleased that i found this site. it has helped me a great deal with my preparations. my husband says i could pass as an OC (obsessive-compulsive) hahaha! well, sometimes it pays to be OC.

uhh, what exactly are love bugs? :uhoh3: