i have two job offers. One is for a day L&D position. The other is for a night post partum position.
My long term goal is to become a midwife.
Job 1 (day L&D): 35 min commute, ok wage
job 2 (night PP): 1 hour commute, $13 more an hour than job 1, best paying hospital in my city
Both jobs are the same union, so same benefits and tuition reimbursement. Both jobs are reputable fancy NYC hospitals.
I am deliberating the pros and cons and would highly value insight on this forum. My long term goal matters. I know I will learn a lot of valuable skills on both floors, but I really would appreciate people chiming in.
Thank you everyone, all your posts have been so so helpful. I am going to take the L&D job and ask the PP job if they may have a PerDiem position available now or sometime in the future they may consider me for. If not, once I get acclimated to L&D and feel more comfortable I can seek out PerDiem PP opportunities either in other hospitals or clinics. The money does matter, as I won’t be able to save much with the L&D job and will basically be paying off my car and able to cover living expenses and then some, but it’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make for a year or two. I’d really like to have enough money to not have to work while doing midwifery clinical, as I have heard most programs recommend not working that year. I have a homecare position now that I can continue PerDiem while working L&D, but a PP PerDiem position would be ideal and I am convinced that experience would make me a great midwife in the future. As someone who wants to go into home birth long term, I want to have as much experience as I can get in the field.
I am going to go back to your original post and the commute — I think something that is half the commute time and in a specialty likely to be more relevant to future goals is probably the better choice, as long as that pay is workable for your living situation. Best of luck!
I am currently a CNM student up friend here and started the program with no labor and delivery experience. I had experience in nursery make you. I just started and labor and delivery nurse position my commute will be one hour I'm working part time at a very small rural hospital that will have only about 60 deliveries per year. My manager is very excited that I'm going to school to be a midwife in as pushing to get me a position 1 some finish with school. The CEO is also very excited and in a previous position he started a midwifery program at a hospital up in Michigan. However because of the very small volume we have at my hospital I am training at a large hospital that does 4000 deliveries a year. It has been a struggle every single day because some or a majority of the nurses are not supportive of natural physiological birth and often make fun of patients who low intervention's or have doulas. I literally cringe most of the 12 or 13 Hours that I'm there every day however I can't really say or do anything because I need to get at least some training before going back to my hospital. I have not told them I'm a student because I can only imagine what they would say or how differently they would treat me. Everyone is going to tell you something different people either strongly believe that you have to have labor and delivery experience to be in effective midwife or they believe you can be a midwife without any labor and delivery experience. I think it really depends on what your goals are and the area you want to practice in as a midwife. For me I needed to get some labor and delivery experience to be able to find a preceptor and employment once I'm out of school because in my area no one will take you on as a student if you don't have labor and delivery and no one will hire you if you don't have labor and delivery. So for me it was important to at least get it on my resume for future prospects. Either job is going to give you very valuable experience and perspective. And if you're looking at midwifery schools I highly recommend frontier. I have been extremely happy in the year that I have been there. If you ever want to talk about this with someone who's also going through it just shoot me a message or an email [email protected]
If you PM me and tell me the hospitals, I can give you some insight. I worked at a couple different NYC hospital as a postpartum nurse and at my first job as a midwife in NYC as well.
Hi there! I am a new grad looking for postpartum jobs in NYC. I would absolutely love your insight, and would be so appreciative for it. For some reason I am not able to PM you, so can you please PM me? I won't take up too much of your time, thank you! ?
seraphimid
80 Posts
Thank you everyone, all your posts have been so so helpful. I am going to take the L&D job and ask the PP job if they may have a PerDiem position available now or sometime in the future they may consider me for. If not, once I get acclimated to L&D and feel more comfortable I can seek out PerDiem PP opportunities either in other hospitals or clinics. The money does matter, as I won’t be able to save much with the L&D job and will basically be paying off my car and able to cover living expenses and then some, but it’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make for a year or two. I’d really like to have enough money to not have to work while doing midwifery clinical, as I have heard most programs recommend not working that year. I have a homecare position now that I can continue PerDiem while working L&D, but a PP PerDiem position would be ideal and I am convinced that experience would make me a great midwife in the future. As someone who wants to go into home birth long term, I want to have as much experience as I can get in the field.