carrie13

Hi everyone - I work for a small community hospital (non-profit, non-union). We had a staff meeting today where a new hospital-wide vacation policy was introduced. This policy does not cover "prime-time" summer vacation (Memorial-Labor day). It only applies to time off from Sept-May. Prior to this policy the protocol for requesting time off was to fill out a time-off slip and submit it to the manager. You could request vacation time months in advance and usually would receive approval within a few weeks of request. The only limitations were no more than 2 consecutive weeks and you could not request your assigned holiday off but could find coverage for your holiday. The new policy as of today is that time off for vacations or random days off can only be requested during the "schedule planning period". So for example the next schedule is 11/8-12/19. The request forms will be available 9/13-9/26. On 9/27 the schedule is closed and no more requests can be made. Management then has 2 weeks to finalize the schedule and it will be posted (and vacations approved/denied) by 10/12. Is this a common vacation policy? It will be pretty much impossible to plan any vacations more than 2 months in advance. And then to find out only 1 month prior to the vacation whether or not you are approved. I'm curious to hear if anyone else has experienced this and how you go about planning your vacations...

I just wanted to say hello and thank you to all the posters. I was offered and accepted a position in the OR that starts on May 18th. I have been a nurse on a cardiac step down unit for the past 9 years along with some per diem experience in homecare and endoscopy. I have always been interested in the OR but haven't had much luck getting my foot through the door without OR experience. My hospital is offering the Peri-op 101 program and I was one of the 3 that was chosen for the program. All of the posts, tips/tricks, etc here were very helpful to me throughout the interview process. I'm sure I will be back here often throughout the training! Thanks again....I am very excited to start this new journey in nursing :)

I've worked for the past 8 years part-time in an acute setting (telemetry/PCU) and the past 3 years part-time in homecare. Like others have mentioned there are skills that you perfect in homecare which you do not get as much exposure to in the hospital setting. In homecare I have had patients with trach, ostomy, feeding tube, etc. In the hospital setting those patients (at least on my floor) are not very common. Also at my hospital we have Respiratory therapists, IV nurses, wound nurses, etc. In the hospital I have never given a nebulizer treatment, started a peripheral IV or developed a wound care plan. All of those things I have done in the home setting... As a fellow Boston-area nurse I would say take whatever job is offered to you because this area has a very tight job market for new grads. Any experience is better than no experience. If this agency does not have Pedi homecare - get some experience through them and in a year transition to another agency that allows you to work with pediatric clients.

I work per diem at two ambulatory endoscopy centers. Both require patients to be able to walk in and out of the facility on their own. Occassionally we will have a patient that requires a wheelchair ride to the car but minimal lifting in terms of pre-op and post-op care. In our procedure rooms you may have to help roll or reposition a patient - keep in mind that these patients are sedated and are not able to assist too much with moving. Also - depending on how your doctor's scope - the stretcher will most likely be elevated to their standing position so it can be hard to get the right body mechanics to move a patient without straining yourself too much, especially if you are short like me :) We do have the MD, 1 RN and 1 tech in the room so rarely will you have to reposition someone without help. You may also be required to push the stretcher from the pre area to the procedure room and then to the post area. I also work 7am-7pm on a busy telemetry/PCU. I've found sometimes that my back hurts more when I work per diem in the Endo center. Probably because we are standing 90% of the time and when in the procedure room not really moving around too much as you are monitoring the patient.

My tele unit has regular tele beds and 6 PCU beds. The PCU trained nurses will occasionally have to float to the ICU but if you are not PCU trained they will not float you.

My unit has 25 tele beds and 6 PCU beds. Tele is a 4:1 ratio with 2 aides and 1-2 secretaries. PCU is a 3:1 ratio with 1 aide and no secretary although the tele secretary will help out if she has time. The PCU nurses also watch the monitors. There are 2 PCU nurses on every shift and each has to watch the monitors for their own 3 patients plus the monitors for half of the tele patients.

I've worked all shifts at my hospital. I started out 3p-11p and really liked the work of the shift - fast paced with lots of admissions and discharges. But I had no life outside of work - all of my friends work a normal M-F day shift and I was missing out on so many get togethers because I was always at work. I tried nights for a while but I found that I can't sleep during the day and was always dragging. Just couldn't adjust to the schedule. I still pick up a few overnights here and there but couldn't do it on a regular basis. Right now I'm working 7a-7p. The day shift is crazy busy and very fast paced. Of course it was a pay cut since I'm losing come of the 3-11 differential but I have a normal life now and can actually meet up with friends after work. I picked up a 3p-11p shift last night and walked in to 2 discharges, 1 admission and a patient who had to go monitored to a test so I had to be off the floor for 90 minutes with my patient. All at change of shift. I definitely don't miss nights like that!

Type of Hospital: community Type of Unit: cardiac telemetry, occasional surgical tele overflow from another unit. Number of beds:25 telemetry - divided into 2 wings (12 pts and 13pts per wing) and 6 PCU beds Number of patients each RN has:usually 4 pts per RN except one nurse gets 5 patients since we have 25 beds. We try to rotate who gets the 5th patient. For PCU the ratio is 3 pts per RN. Do you have a nurse's aides and/or at what census level do you downstaff an aide: We have 1 aide for each wing plus PCU. So the wing aides get 12-13 pts each. PCU aide gets 6 pts. Very rarely do we downstaff but a lot of times our aides get pulled for 1:1 observation or we are short an aide. Do you have a unit secretary and/or at what census level do you downstaff the sec'y: yes, never downstaffed.

We don't get holiday gifts at my hospital. For nurses week we got dinner served and candy delivered to our breakroom.

Where are you located OctoberBride? My unit just hired a slew of new grads over the summer.

At my hospital anything over 40 hours per week or over what you are hired to work in a 24 hour period is overtime. So if you are hired for 8-hour shifts and work a 12-hour shift you would get 4 hours of overtime for the extra 4 hours worked. So in your situation it would be overtime from 11pm-midnight only. Then the next 24 hour period would start and it would be base pay from midnight til 7am.

I'm in a small non-profit hospital in the suburbs of Boston. I make $25.50/hr. Evening differential is 12.5% and an additional 10% on weekends.

I'm on a cardiac tele floor. day and evening shift is 4 patients, rarely 5 if we are short. Night shift is 6 patients. We have aides that cover 12 patients.

I work on a cardiac floor - we have 4 patients per nurse on days/evenings. On nights each nurse has 6 patients.

I make $24.75 base with a 12.5% differential for evenings and an additional 10% differential for weekends...so about $27.80/hr during the week and $30.32 on weekends. That is for a community hospital outside of Boston. I have about 6months experience and work on a cardiac tele floor...