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by Lace-RN

Hi , am a RN in Pa with 19 years experience and am looking for any info on Polk county and hospitals/clinics etc there. Anyone from there or work in that area? Am sooo sick of cold and snow and want to move towards the sun! Am specifically looking at the Lakeland area. Any help would be appreciated!

[rjflyn]

Re: Polk County Info

Imperial Polk county is located approximately half way between Orlando and Tampa Flordia. There are 5 hospital located in the county. They are located in Lakeland, Davenport, Lake Wales, Winter Haven and Bartow.


In Lakeland there is Lakeland Regional Medical Center. Check there website at www.lrmc.com. You can actually chat with a recruiter on Tuesdays and Thursdays online.

As far as the climate having moved to the area last fall I personally put on a light jacket maybe 4 times last winter, the natives/long time residents wore winter coats like we are use to seeing.

RJ

Originally Posted by Lace-RN

Hi , am a RN in Pa with 19 years experience and am looking for any info on Polk county and hospitals/clinics etc there. Anyone from there or work in that area? Am sooo sick of cold and snow and want to move towards the sun! Am specifically looking at the Lakeland area. Any help would be appreciated!

[Lace-RN]

Re: Polk County Info

Thanks for the reply! Do you or anyone else know how the hospitals compare for working conditions?

[rn2md2b]

Re: Polk County Info

Greetings from Polk County. There are only the 5 hospitals in the Polk County. The two larger hospitals are Lakeland Regional Medical Center and Winter Haven Hospital. Both are quite busy but LRMC has a level 2 trauma ER. I have worked at both and can tell you good and bad points but most are just my opinion. LRMC pays a little more but I think only by about .50 cents. Neither are teaching hospitals and both encourage growth amoung the nursing staff. LRMC has an excellent cancer research center and both now have open heart centers(although Winter Haven just started doing open hearts in Aug 2005.) The Lakeland Ledger(our so called media paper) ran a year long weekly about the infection rate at LRMC. This forced them to put in place a lot of new protocols to prevent infection, I think it was a good thing. The other 3 hospitals offer maybe $1 or so less for nurses. They are Heart of Florida in Haines City, Lake Wales Medical Center, and Bartow Memorial. They offer a good small home town type hospital. Nothing really special but you know its the small places that get the neatest things. I hope this answers your questions checkout their websites and see what you think.LRMC - www.lrmc.comWinter Haven Hospital - www.winterhavenhospital.comHeart of Florida - www.heartofflorida.comThe other two I am not sure of but will find out and post later. Hope this helps.

[Lace-RN]

Re: Polk County Info

Thanks so much for your post! I've been to all the websites, but what I was looking for was an "inside" opinion before I made choices. I've worked for 11 years in a small town type hospital and know all the in's and out's of that type of hospital. What I was wondering is what nurse/patient ratio's were, are nurses respected by docs, if you had to work for one of them which would it be, is there mandatory OT? etc. I have only been to that area once and when we make the trip to check it out I don't want to waste my time in places that I wouldn't want to work. I'm hoping to be able to move before winter, and trying to gather as much infor as possible. Any info you can give me I'm sure will help. Thanks so much!!

[rjflyn]

Re: Polk County Info

Alot of those answers best come from the nurse recruiter at a particuar hospital. For example I work in the ER at WHH and quite frankly I have no clue what that patient ratio's on the floor are. I do know ICU is 2:1. In the ER we try to keep it at 4:1. The hospital is now in the process of filing for magnet status.

Rj
QUOTE=Lace-RN]Thanks so much for your post! I've been to all the websites sbut what I was looking for was an "inside" opinion before I made choices. I've worked for 11 years in a small town type hospital and know all the in's and out's of that type of hospital. What I was wondering is what nurse/patient ratio's were, are nurses respected by docs, if you had to work for one of them which would it be, is there mandatory OT? etc. I have only been to that area once and when we make the trip to check it out I don't want to waste my time in places that I wouldn't want to work. I'm hoping to be able to move before winter, and trying to gather as much infor as possible. Any info you can give me I'm sure will help. Thanks so much!![/quote]

[rn2md2b]

Re: Polk County Info

Having worked both hospitals I can share what I do know about both WHH and LRMC. Both have the same ratio's in the critical care specialties. SICU, MICU, & CICU all have a 1:2 patient/nurse ratio. Unless you have a really critical patient(i.e. ballon pumps or CVVHD) then you go to 1:1. The new CVICU at WHH is 1:1 always and they try to have an extra nurse for more help. PCU is split into two units. The even side regular cardiac(13 beds) the odd side CVU(24 hour post open hearts from CVICU)has 6 beds. PCU is 1:4 and CVU is now back to 1:2. PCU is soon to move to a bigger floor and will start taking interventional patients. The ratio should remain the same if not drop to a CICU type ratio. Now I haven't work any other areas at LRMC except critical care so like the last post said you may want to contact the hospital for other floor ratios. I've worked critical care at Heart of Florida also and I must say that I didn't want it to end but for me the drive sucked. They had the best doctor/nurse relationship than the other two hospitals. I hope this works for you. Anymore questions let me know.