Help?! Possible relocation

HI! Funny this is the first post I read. I am in Cali too and graduated in December. I am relocating to Arizona (my fiance and I already bought a home to be done in August) and looking into hospitals as well. I am not sure where you are going/looking...but the pay seems pretty similar throughout. Most places I have contacted are between $25-$29/hr, they have nice shift differentials for nights, and some even have shift diff for weekends! I am looking into Banner Desert right now because I am in Queen Creek...but look into CHW hospitals as well, there is St. Joes as well as Mercy Gilbert. Scottsdale has a lot of hospitals as well, I think the mayo clinic is there, amongst others. Best of luck!!

Banner is about $2/hour more than CHW. But CHW has better benefits as they have a pension in addition to a 403B.

The Scottsdale hospitals also pay more.

Search around in this forum, as there are lots of good threads relating to different hospitals and the different pay scales.

Phx Baptist? Ehh ...... don't even look there, that's all I'll say about that :)

FazAZ,

You sound like you are buying a house where I am. I am an AZ native and applying to NS this Spring. My house will be done this Aug in Queen Creek too!

As a fellow new grad I can give you an idea what the hospitals are paying new grads.

Banner $24.50/hr- nighttime dif is 20%, but no weekend dif

CHW (Mercy and Chandler Regional)- 24.10/hr, nighttime dif 20% PLUS weekend dif of 10% which includes FRi 7p- Mon 7A, plus they also have a great pension plan

St. Joes- (also CHW, but less pay and WAYYY far away from Queen Creek, believe me, I used to work there, it's a long drive...) around $23.50/hr 20%shift dif and 10% weekends.

If you're moving to the Gilbert, Queen Creek area I'd look into Banner Baywood, Mercy Gilbert, Banner Gateway (brand new hospital), Chandler REgional or Banner Desert even. There is one hospital to stay away from around here, but I didn't list it, pm me if you want to know the name. If you're interested in peds, Banner Desert is building a brand new peds hospital, due to be completed in the next couple of years, but for now they have a great peds area.

Housing used to be way better than CA (which is why I'm living here), but a couple of years ago we had the housing boom that affected the country. We're now in a steady plunge as far as housing prices go so if I were you I wouldn't buy now. Prices are going to continue to drop and you'll find yourself owing more than your house is worth. A friend of mine bought a house last year, brand new, the builder was asking $285K, she offered $225K, whoooppeeee they accepted!! The builder is now selling her same house for $155K, which means in less than a year she's upside down by $70K. There are some pretty good deals out here, with foreclosures and house auctions going on in EVERY neighborhood, if you can get a good deal there you'd probably be better off.

Just my

St. Joes pay actually starts at $24.10, but the night shift diff is 18%.

I guess they've raised it then. I was offered a position there in November and it was $23.50 with nighttime dif being 20%.

I have a couple of friends who were hired at Banner Baywood Heart and they started out at $25.50/hr, which made me think Banner was raising its starting salary. Unfortunately the other hospitals (including Banner Gateway) hadn't raised their starting salary when I started.

One good benefit to CHW is their clinical ladder. I'm not sure if Banner has something similar, but you do a couple of extra projects and fill out this package and at 6 months you can go up the first step of the clinical ladder which gives you $2/hr more. That's pretty good that you can get a $2/hr raise at 6 months! It encourages the nurses to be proactive and to look around and work on areas that may need to be worked on (like reorganizing the charting system or whatever), so things are actually getting done around the unit (at least where I work).

One thing new grad nurses may want to consider when moving here is that we're also turning out a lot of new grad nurses and there's only so many slots in the hospitals for new grads. Yes, there is a nursing shortage here, but not a new grad nursing shortage. If you're considering coming here you may want to look for a job during times when some of the schools aren't graduating. Because we have a lot of accelerated schools, that's hard to do. I know there was a big graduating class in December, there's one in March, May, August, and then December again. Not sure if there's any other times. It was hard for some of my fellow graduates to find jobs because the hospitals had just hired May and August graduates some of which were still on orientation. Specialty areas were hard to come by. If you have some experience in the area you want to go into you've got a better chance. I was able to get a job in L&D because I'd externed there for a year, but I'm the only one who ended up in L&D out of my graduating class.