Community outreach team

I applied for a job on a brand spankin' new community outreach interdisciplinary team with the mental health company in this area of the state. I already work for a subsidiary of the company in the acute psych hospital, but there are a lot of things about this job I'm not happy with. I spoke to my interviewer on the phone briefly today and she described the position in detail, which was just advertised as "outpatient psychiatric nurse"--I had thought it was just an office-nurse type position for people coming for their outpatient psych provider visits. I was thrilled to find out it's a community outreach program, but...

The pay is way. stinkin'. low. I mean, almost as low as my first job out of college. Between losing my shift differential (I usually work nights) and my bonus for being part of the relief pool, I would take a 33% cut in wage! Plus since it would be day shift, it would mean regular day care for my kids which right now I get away with by working nights and just using day care if I need to sleep for concurrent shifts. It would be a HUGE hit to our family's bottom line.

I'm also starting grad school this month and I have the feeling that the "down time" in working nights will be invaluable when it comes to studying or assignments. I wouldn't get that chance doing outpatient visits. And the big plus, I had thought, would be that at least I'd have a regular schedule but according to the woman I spoke to earlier, some "flexibility" is needed in our schedules. Overall it sounds like there are too many negatives for me to even really plan to take the interview but my heart is really calling for me to go for this position.

Has anyone here done community outreach? Inpatient is so stressful. We're always short-staffed, we're always running out of stuff, and I loved case-management when I did it before. I also wonder if I could keep one PRN shift per week at the psych hospital and do my part-time schedule as outpatient, then I'd get a wider variety of experience and get to be part of both worlds. That's quite a bit more than I want to work while I go to school though, especially with my kids being little.

Sigh.