Anybody currently in Philadelphia?

ddunnrn · May 9, 2011

What, in particular did you want to know? I'm currently on disability, but I've been an RN in Philly for 25 years. I love this city, even with all of its peculiarities.

Dave Dunn

[email protected]

bonesrn · May 9, 2011

Philadelphia is a great city! I am originally from PA and trying to get back to the Philly area. Talking to a few travel companies hoping to get a travel assignment and then a perm position. Checking out different areas via boards (city-data, fodors) and of course everyone has a different opinion.

What hospital did you work at? Anything you want to share would be welcome :)

ddunnrn · May 10, 2011

I have been a psych nurse my whole 25 years, and the only large hospital I worked at was Temple University Hospital (1989-99). Back then, psych didn't lose as much money as some other specialties, so the psych units were kept up pretty well. Now, with managed care and drastic mental health cutbacks, the length of stay is so limited and the turnover so fast, that the units bleed money, and of course the patients don't get the treatment they really need. Who can treat a suicidal patient in 3 days? Many times they are so depressed, they don't even realize where they are until they are out the door.

Temple itself was very strange--back in the day when all of the hospitals were buying each other and merging, Temple bought all of the bottom-of-the-barrel places, which later closed. It also built an 80-million dollar children's hospital in a city with 2 other major children's hospitals. Not to mention that they took the Shriner's Hospital off its nice grounds in the NE, and stuck it with Temple Children's in the middle of gunshot city in north philly. Terrible planning, mostly political.

The last 10 years I worked for companies that contracted for the county jail medical and psych, still doing psych. At first it was really OK, and very interesting. The pay wasn't too bad, but slowly over the years, the management and policies got to be really difficult to deal with. The company I worked for was the cheapest company I ever worked for, and they would do anything to keep the contract with the city, which affected us mainly in terms of staffing. I always said that if the staffing matrix called for 1.5 nurses, the would find somebody and saw them in half rather than have "extra" staffing. Just as an aside, I got the axe the day after I told them I was going on dialysis.

I could tell you a lot of my old dinosaur nursing stories, so please email me if you want any more information, but as I said, I'm a little out of the loop about major hospital nursing these days.

Dave Dunn, RN

[email protected]