From psych nursing to med surge??

[flymaxwell05]

Soooo ~ I am a psych nurse (for many years) and our hospital has decided to *partner* with a company called SUN (Serving Unmet Needs) behavioral, a for profit hospital. Eventually SUN will build their hospital on an already bought site. This hospital will be free standing. Has anyone here ever worked in a free standing hospital for behavioral health? If so, what was your experience? I have many reservations about going to this free standing hospital, and have been looking within the hospital where I am now for another position. I have an interview with a manager from a med surge unit next week and all I can think about are all the questions I have for THAT unit during an interview. I want to know first off, why a manager would consider someone from psych? Is the orientation process THAT thorough, or is the turn-over of staff so horrible that they do not care who comes in. I am not, by any means saying I cannot do this. I know med-surge would be a very busy and acute area, and there would be many days of pure exhaustion, but I cannot help the questions in my head. I worked for a short time in telemetry after an ICU internship, but they had monitors. I know this unit does not. ANYWAY ~ the other questions are nurse / patient ratio, teamwork, definitely turn-over of staff, retention, etc, etc, AND I would also love the opportunity to interview some nursing staff there. I definitely want to get a feel for the team-work, manager/staff relationship. Team work is everything, no matter what type of unit you work on, so if the nurse retention is horrible somewhere, then that makes for a toxic work environment. I would like to hear feed back on any of this subject matter! Thanks in advance! P.S. ~ I have also applied for a PRN hospice position, as I think this would be my first choice. :)