L&D at a small hospital- is it worth it?

[SJaae, ASN, BSN]

L&D is the reason why I became a nurse. I started out in Trauma Med-surg for my first 3 years. I am moving to a new town and figured this is the best time for me to apply to L&D. I applied and got an interview. The hospital I applied to is very small. Any high risk pregnancy or sick baby gets flown to a bigger hospital in the next city over. So they do not have a NICU or mother baby unit. Mothers stay from labor to birth and L&D nurses do it all. The unit has 5 L&D beds and about 7 PP beds. 

I have heard from other nurses at other small hospitals who say they get called off or are put on call all the time working in a small hospital. The hospital is about 45 mins away from where I will live, which isn't a problem, its what I drive now to work, but being called off or put on all frequently could become an issue. 

I am in the middle of building a house and of course we all have other bills, so my question is, is L&D in a small hospital slow? Are you getting called off often? I cannot afford to be called off frequently, so I am not sure what to do.  

The next L&D unit is 2 hours away so this is the only L&D option for me. 

 

[Idiosyncratic, BSN, RN]

Honestly, I think it'll really depend. I know that oncall where I was you had to be within 30 minutes of the hospital. There were nights where we had absolutely no patients. It's very inconsistent. I was always advised to save as much of my PTO as possible(even the half hours) for this reason. 

[Surfandnurse]

I’ve worked in a lot of small hopsitals, always LDRP, and didn’t get called off because of minimum staffing and floating. I’ve always worked nights too, which usually means less staff so less chance of getting called off. You’ll have to ask during your interview how often it happens.... for the most part there always has to be 2 l&d nurses on to keep the unit open, from my experience....