kimtab

I have been doing local contracts in the SF Bay area where my husband and I relocated for his job 6 months ago. My current contract is up Jan 22 and they don't need me to extend. I am due June 1. I plan to work up until the end but I am wondering whether any travel nurses have worked in this situation before? I'd like to be able to work something into my next contract so that if something unexpected happens and I have to quit work I won't be stuck owing a bunch of money. But on the other hand, I worry that revealing my pregnancy will cause me to be discriminated against and not get a position at all. Had hoped to be staff somewhere by now but jobs aren;t falling from the sky here right now. Really need to work, can't afford to quit at this stage. Any advice?

It was 7 weeks. if they won;t help you resolve it then just leave it off your resume. You have 25 years of experience, no one will miss that 7 weeks!

Meg didn't even bother voting in elections for most of her own adult life, and I think she's actually a drag queen (she looks like a man, doesn't she?) I think RuPaul ought to establish residency out here and run for governor. The celebrity precedent is there.

I have 6 years of critical care experience and I have been working travel contracts for 4 months because I haven't been able to find a staff position. I am in the SF Bay area. Jobs are not falling from the sky for experienced nurses out here much less new grads. All this and...very expensive to live here. The higher salaries mitigate that factor somewhat but only if you are actually making a salary!

Anybody working at San Mateo Medical Center? I have an interview with the nurse recruiter there tomorrow for a tele position. Wouldn't be my first choice since I am an ICU nurse but I don't mind tele and it doesn't seem like jobs in the Bay Area are falling out of the sky right now. This is the only response I got from dozens of applications I submitted so I would kind of feel weird jumping on the first thing I saw so to speak but my alternative would be a 13 wk travel contract with Kaiser Redwood City and keep looking around. Any thoughts on this hospital?

they require fingerprint results before issuing a temp license http://www.rn.ca.gov/pdfs/applicants/tlcounter.pdf So you can only walk through if you have done your fingerprints and the results have been reported to them. I sent in my stuff as I had it. I had everything in as of May 25, 2010 and my license was issued about 6 weeks later.

I am on my first travel assignment. I had one week of general hospital orientation/computer training and I have 2 twelve hour shift with a preceptor before being on my own with a patient assignment. There is no way you can do this with Zero experience. No way.

We turn it off to the drain to get a pressure reading. If you had it open to drain and patient wouldn't the transducer be getting the pressures from both sides? Doesn't seem like that would be accurate. We document drainage and pressure q1h.

...you've ever told anyone who's behavior was annoying you to "Stop being so frontal" ...you wake your kids up in the morning with a sternal rub

Pick up the phone and call HR at the hospitals you want to work at. They don't always put that info out on their websites.

Grady is the county hospital, that's all I'm going to say about that. They are a level one trauma center and are known for their burn center as well. I think you can learn a lot there, do a search for threads that are about Grady though and use that info to help you decide. Douglasville is on the other side of the world from Grady. Stone Mountain probably isn't any closer, although if you settle in that area you can also look at working at Emory, Dekalb Medical, Egleston. If you really still want to work downtown, don't discount the real estate south of Atlanta. It isn't as hip to live on the South side so you can get closer in for cheaper.

I live 12 miles from work currently. I work an 0800 to 1630 schedule. It takes me 40 minutes to go that 12 miles in the morning, and between 30-45 minutes to do it in the evening, though it has taken me up to 1.5 hours on days when multiple accidents were all over the highways. You just can't take drivetimes for granted here, although of you work a 7-7 schedule your drive will be much more predictable. I have never worked at Wellstar, although if you do a search on this forum you will probably find some threads with info. Marietta is a pleasant place to live, it is considered a suburb of Atlanta and so yes, the traffic is still bad. I live in Roswell, where I have access to Northside, Saint Joe's, N. Fulton, CHOA. If you want to live downtown, Atlanta Medical Center is another place to look.

I would figure out where you're going to work and then decide on your living situation becuase traffic is a real pain in the orifice here. The traffic here is supposedly comparable to driving in LA, and I believe it. Housing is very reasonable, but you won't make the money you made in CA. You shouldn't have any trouble finding a job though. Most of the hospitals here have their job postings online, here are a few to check: http://www.emoryhealthcare.org http://www.northside.com http://www.wellstar.org http://www.northfultonregional.com http://www.dekalbmedicalcenter.org http://www.piedmont.org http://www.stjosephsatlanta.org http://www.emorydunwoody.com http://www.shepherd.org http://www.choa.org http://www.gradyhealthsystem.org There are more, this is just what I get off the top of my head.

If you aren't in a class right now, go ahead and get your fundamentals and your med surg book and start reading. Try to cover the basics before you start class. Cardiovascular, respiratory, renal, would be good things to cover ahead of time. Also, get familiar with the nursing process and care plans. What I finally figured out worked for me was to outline the chapters as I went through them. The writing helped me to retain things and when I was done I had a study guide. I was a big fan of buying extra books as well. The Incredibly Easy series does a good job of explaining things in simple terms and without a whole lot of superfluous language. Pathophysiology Made Incredibly Easy was a big help in the second semester for me. Make yourself a template that looks like the one GPC gives you and do ALL of your careplans on the computer. You'll thank me when you're doing your umpteenth plan for Gas exchange, impaired or Infection, risk for and you don't have to start from scratch because you have one saved that you can just edit. When encountered with a test question which seems to have multiple correct answers, remember it all goes back to ABC. What is the immediate need? When encountered with a test question that seems to be written by someone with little command of the English language and a less than solid grasp of reality; try the ABC thing first. If you don't get your answer that way, you may need to channel the particular faculty member who wrote it ( "I know the RIGHT answer, but what would Ms. Soandso be thinking?") All humans are fallible and GPC faculty are human through and through, though it may not be obvious. Therefore, when they write a test question that simply makes no sense, and you have a case for why your answer was more correct than theirs, please make your case in a diplomatic and non-threatening manner, but do make it. They have been known to listen to reason, and you may wish you had those two points some day in the future. If you are committed to entering the program, do yourself the favor of going into it with the attitude that you will succeed. Conduct yourself as a professional at all times and no one will have any excuse to single you out. Feel free to PM me if you have any more questions.

"Right to work" simply means that no person can be required to join a labor organization or pay dues to such as a condition of employment. I am an "At will" employee because I do not have an employment contract, and either myself, or my employer can terminate our relationship at any time, for any reason. Thats what my employee handbook says anyway. I assume federal discrimination laws would be the exception of course. Sounds like you got shafted. They wanted to pay you less and they figured out a way to do it. But you said that the department guidelines state that you can be terminated after 12 weeks, and you asked to be put back on the schedule after only 8. So even if they are complying with the law, it sounds like they are not following their own policies. I would definitely see what the lawyer has to say, but have you tried going up the chain of command at the hospital? It may get you nowhere, but I think it looks good if you exhaust that avenue before taking legal action.

Taking classes as an adult is very different. I think you may find you are an "A" student now. Having to pay for it yourself and make all the other sacrifices you have to make makes it a lot easier to get those good grades:)

I would interpret that as a float position. You would be sent to one of several different units for your shift, based on where they needed the staff that day.

Amen. I have worked in other industries and only in healthcare have I seen this unbelievably rabid attention to recruitment, with absolutely no service paid to retention.

The starting salary for a new teacher in Dekalb Co., Georgia is $38,900. The starting salary (based on an hourly wage of $20) for a new graduate nurse in a hospital setting in the same area is $41,600. Not much of a difference. You also need to look at benefits (the government probably provides better ones than your local hospital I'll bet...). Working hours and conditions, Ability to advance, etc. Many teachers do spend hours outside of the school day doing their work. I can tell you that my sons teacher is there when I drop him off at 0700, and is frequently still there when I pick him up at 1700. With most types of nursing, you just can't take you work home with you. Then again, nursing has some weird schedules as well. There is often on-call work that you have to oblige yourself to, But if you get sick of your oncology floor, you can request a transfer to mother-baby. If you get tired of teaching High School English, they just aren't going to let you transfer to kindergarten, that's a whole 'nother degree. I'm a big fan of job-shadowing. Spend a day with a teacher in the age group you have the most interest in, and spend a day with a nurse on a unit you think would be of interest to you. Nursing school can be quite brutal, make sure it's what you really want before you subject yourself to it:)

Monday he will be in school, and Sunday during the day someone can watch him. The catch being I'll only see my son for a couple of hours total on Sunday. I think the additional time I am gaining suring the week and the ability to participate in school stuff, etc. more than makes up for that though.

Dixie, Did the night schedule throw you off too much? I imagine Monday would be enough to recover and then be able to function normally for the rest of the week but then I've never done nights, so I don't know.

I'm a single parent, child care issues abound. I've worked at a M-F 8 hours shifts job for the past year but the call schedule has gotten out of control enough that the convenience of the M-F schedule has been negated. Since the only other fields I have seen 8 hour day shifts around here are surgery and L&D (not interested!) I am thinking about weekend nights in an ICU in an acute brain injury/Spinal cord injury center. I have free and reliable child care available on Sat and Sun. The pay, with diff's, for 24 hours is just shy of what I make in my 40 hours a week now. There will be no real difference since I will be saving on childcare expenses by not working during the week. I'll still have half the day Saturday to do weekend stuff. Sunday will be a total wash of course, I realize that. I'll sleep while the kiddo is in school Monday and wake up with the week in front of me, to make like Donna Reed/June Cleaver with my kid. Seems too simple. What am I missing here. There must be some hidden evils lurking.

I can't imagine a 10 year old DUI shutting you out of a job. You need to find out what is in the background check, and what your previous employers are saying. I don't know how you do this, but I guess I would start with a very frank phone call to HR in the places where you were turned down. Tell them you are having a great degree of difficulty and you respect their need to keep certain information confidential but can they please give you some honest feedback about their hiring decision? Good luck to you, let us know how things turn out.

I had it for probably 2 years before I went to the Dr. about it. Then another 6 months to a year of "better but still there" before it went away. Yes, it just disappeared one day. I wasn't doing anything differently. Mine manifested as heel pain, which was most intense in the morning upon first getting on my feet, or after having been seated for a while and then getting up and walking. I remember I hiked 10 miles one day then got in the car and rode the 2 1/2 hours home. When I got out of the car, I could barely walk because of the pain. It wasn't usually crippling though. I waited tables for a living at the time and got along alright.

I had plantar fascitis a few years ago. My doc told me to get some arch support inserts at the drugstore (he seemed to think they were about as good as orthotics at a fraction of the cost), to wear only lace-up supportive shoes, and to take an anti-inflammatory prn. It all helped, but it was still there. It just went away one day. One day I woke up and was pain free. I have no idea why to this day, but I'll assume following the above directions contributed to my cure.