Maricopa County???

I have been offered the chance for an interview at Maricopa County but want to live in East Valley. I need sponsorship for GC.

My 3 options are

1- commute (60 in rush hour, :smackingf)

2-live nearer Maricopa county facility

3- hold out for East valley hospital

Would love to hear opinions

East Phoenix is not far from County. Where in the east valley are you talking about....or are you talking a whole other suburb of Phoenix like Apache Junction, Mesa, Chandler, Gilbert, Tempe? Tempe wouldn't be that far.

Or are you talking about communities that are not even considered a suburb? Places we have seen lately that aren't considered suburbs such as Florence, Casa Grande, and Buckeye.

We are looking at Chandler, Gilbert, SE Mesa possibly Queen Creek- (Dobson to Power, Baseline to Hunt highway area)

we are going to AZ on vacation in the fall and gonna drive out as far as Queen Creek and also look at AJ properly, we only usually see the bit you pass through to go up to the lakes!

I need to look into Tempe a bit more too, we stayed in the Mills area a couple of times overnight but it seems much busier than the Val Vista area.

Do you know what County is like?

TIA for any help

Do you know what County is like?

TIA for any help

Hopefully some nurses that work at county will chime in. I have done clinicals there and a couple of my friends from my current hospital went to work in their new cardiac critical care. It is a busy teaching hospital. The patients tend to be in the lower socio-economic bracket. Personally, I love this sort of pt because they seem grateful for the care given. They have a premiere burn center at county.

I see one of your specialties is ortho. I haven't seen the set up for ortho med/surg........but I bet the patients are 4 to a room. I don't like that setup because if you walk in to do something for one patient, the 3 other patients always need something too.

Bone up on your medical spanish. Intepreters are available - but I don't know how easy it is to obtain one.

Welcome to AZ

:welcome:

I know what you mean about the 4 bay set up- that is the norm in the UK. I am used to working with a very diverse population in outer London but I will have to learn Spanish from scratch- only got taught French at school!!!!! Actually I am putting my youngest into Spanish club to help the transition- maybe I should join her

I live in Tempe and I used to work at County.

If you want to live in Queen Creek or Apache Junction ..... yeah that's going to be quite a commute. I couldn't do it, but some people do.

You said something about looking more into Tempe. I think that'd be a great option. I live in the more southern/central area of Tempe, so not too close to ASU ..... ASU is about 10 minutes from me. When I worked at County it was 11 miles from my house and took me about 15 minutes to get there each way, so not too bad.

County's a great place to work, depending on the area. I haven't heard such great things about the med/surg floors, heavier patient loads than most places. But I don't know how accurate this is ..... again, it was just from what I heard at the time.

The people that work there are AWESOME!! It seemed like a lot of people worked there because they wanted to, because they liked the patient population, and because it was a good place to work. You don't necessarily work at County because you have to, but because you want to. They were great. They also have awesome benefits/retirement.

And I learned a lot of Spanish in the little bit of time that I worked there!

Good luck to you, let us know what you decide!

Thanks guys, I am still asking recruiter lots of questions, probably driving her crazy:typing emails going back and forth,will let you know how it goes, all other comments welcome.

I know they have a great sign-on bonus, and I've heard about the bennies.......but what's the pay like?

hi everyone!

like the others, i heard their bennies are good--good vacation time/state retirement etc etc.

i don't know if they are still giving that outrageous sign on bonus any longer.

coming from a new nurse that did clinicals there, i would say that their ER and ICUs are pretty good. i would definitely stay off of the floors, OB, and Peds. their burn ICU is tops if you can handle all that emotional strain. they are nationally recognized.

the problems that they have pretty much mirror the rest of the hospitals in arizona: short staffed, retention issues, staffing ratios. i know that they pay on the lower side. right now, they are def the lowest in new grad pay. not sure how they even out or compare to some. i've heard that they use a lot of registry (which to me, personally means that they have staffing issues), and i heard that they have a lack of supplies. (for whatever that means).

have you thought about working for CHW in Chandler, Gilbert or out in Mesa?

When I first started working at County almost 2 years ago, the new grad rate was $20.53. I left there and went to a different Phx hospital, which their new grad rate was only $19 something, which was on the lower end for valley hospitals. But they bumped up my rate so it was matching what I was getting at County. Then just a few months after working there, they bumped the new grad rate up to $24 something. I'm not sure if County bumped theirs up, but I can't imagine they bumped it up that much.

Other than the new grad rate, the other RNs there said their pay was comparative to if not higher than other valley hospitals. So while the new grad rate might not be as good as other hospitals, it pays to stay there a while.

I mentioned a ton of positives for working at County. The one thing that I didn't like is that they were short-staffed a lot, by their own accord. They were EXTREMELY tight with their numbers. At the time I worked there I worked in the well-baby nursery. Say we had 24 babies that called for 4 nurses. We each have 6 babies, no big deal. But then there needs to be a nurse to transition the new babies. Even if the L&D board was FULL, they would NOT, under any circumstances staff us with one more nurse to accomodate our growing census. So even though we started out at 24 babies with 4 nurses, by the end of the night we could have 32 babies and still have the same 4 nurses.

Stuff like that was just so frustrating. It's the bad thing about working for a poorer hospital that is trying to cut corners every which way.

But that was really the only downside to it, if you find a good floor I'm sure it could be a great work environment, regardless of the staffing problems.

have you thought about working for CHW in Chandler, Gilbert or out in Mesa?

Yes- I would love to work in that area but coming from the UK I do not have the same amount of control over where I work.