Is your hospital feeling the effects of the economy

Personally it's not affecting me. I'm still picking up as much OT as I want.

I am only a student right now. However, my mom has a friend who is an RN in Labor & Delivery in Flint. She said her hospital is cutting nurses because there is a declining number of births due to the economy. I guess people are deciding not to have children and/or so many have moved away due to lack of jobs there.

Henry Ford Hospital will be holding a nurse recruitment job fair on Nov.13.

Oakwood is trying to cut expenses until the end of the year. No nurses are being laid off that I know of. In fact we have 3 open positions for nurses on our floor they are actively recruiting for. However, we have been asked to work short 1 nurse for 4 hrs out of each 12 hr shift until end of yr. Our unit is usually busy so there is overtime if you want. They would rather cut agency and contingent and have us work the OT if we want. But the rumors fly that they could close departments. They closed a Med-surg floor earlier this yr. Also, nurses who have been here longer tell me they say the same thing for cost cutting the last 2-3 months every yr, so maybe it's not due to the economy or not totally.

I heard they started mandatory OT at Oakwood. This is according to a friend of mine who just spoke with a recruiter. Do you work on the Acuite Care unit, I've wanted to work contingent at Oakwood. I heard ACU is like ICU.

Can any of you give a little info on sinai-grace in detroit, such as... is it too far to commute from ann arbor, travel friendly, decent area, high standards of care, how many icu beds, CVICU seperate?? I will be staying with my sis in ann arbor, st.joes has no need and UofM will not hire first time traveler. Any info, greatly appreciated!!!

Yes, in Phoenix, definitely fwe feel the effects. They took away our private unit fund of a few grand--no x-mas part, no double time, no OT for that matter, canceling us like crazy. Scarey.

There is really no decent part of Detroit other than downtown. Sinai-Grace is on the west side. It's not too bad. I work at Henry Ford which is close to the downtown area of Detroit, which is not too bad.

I work for home health care agencies. One of them insures that I don't even get full time hours for the week, much less overtime. Both agencies don't pay for overtime. Don't get paid for holidays either. I've heard that several of the local agencies have reduced their rates of pay. Even the clients are aware of this. They have talked about the subject, fearful, I guess, that they will lose another caregiver. I've noted reduced pay rates in the job listings where pay rates are mentioned.