MIRN923

Most Portland area hospitals are unionized through the Oregon Nurses Association (ONA), so if you search Google for, say, "OHSU ONA Contract", you can easily pull up the current contract and find your exact rate of pay plus any differentials you would make. OHSU is currently renegotiating and I'd recommend staying away from getting hired with them until the new contract is signed. There's rumblings of a strike in June so just a heads up for that... Worst case scenario, you get hired and then don't get paid due to an active strike. Hopefully it won't come to that. Also day shifts are harder to find here than they are in less desirable places to work. Good luck!

I just got a pair of HOKA ONE ONE's. My knees have been bothering me after 12 hour shifts running around on concrete, and HOKAs are very well cushioned. I also have a pair of stable Saucony's that I use Superfeet insoles with. I have tried them all, and in my opinion, athletic shoes are less than half the price of Danskos (and I hate the way Danskos feel and look) and some other high-end shoes, so even if they wear out sooner, just buy another pair. I haven't had an issue with spills or anything, and they breathe well. I don't like Crocs because they don't support my feet well. I find when I wear them, my feet get very tired and achey after just a few hours.

I would never sign a contract locking me into an employer, no matter how much they were wanting to pay me, for two years.

Thanks for all the suggestions. I'm going to call up some of my agencies I worked with prior to getting my current job to see if there are any local contracts they could get me in here. I'm also going to talk to my manager and ask if there is anything she might be able to do to help me out. I've tried earplugs and I use two white noise machines in my bedroom. The noises are quick bass-driven banging noises such as doors shutting, vacuum cleaners hitting the walls, and drawers shutting. Unfortunately earplugs and noise machines are poor blockers of these types of sounds. If there is nothing that my manager is able to do, I'm going to see if there is another job that I can take until I am able to move out of here. Thanks again.

Me: I am a critical care nurse (RN, BSN, CCRN) with 2.5 years of experience. I am a lifelong midwesterner and recently decided to move out to the west coast with my lovely wife, who is not in healthcare (she is self-employed and works from home). I am 29 years old and was a high school teacher briefly before becoming a nurse. My primary motivation for the switch into nursing was to ultimately become a NP and either work in a neurology clinic (as a headache specialist) or open my own headache clinic one day. I have been in Portland now for 5 months. Situation: Work: Prior to moving out here, I had avoided ever working nights. I struggled for nearly my entire life to wrangle my own migraines under control, and a major component to my success was maintenance of a consistent sleep schedule. For this job, though, I had to take a night position. I work at a unionized hospital where seniority is everything, and my hospital is currently undergoing terse contract renegotiations with the nurses union. The hospital has decided to declare a sudden budgetary crisis and has instituted a hiring freeze. I am therefore one of the freshest faces on my unit. Other night shifters on my unit have been waiting over 3 years to make the move to days. My hospital has a 6 month "probationary period" in which a nurse can be fired at-will by the hospital. We are allowed to transfer to a different unit during this period but no other units that I am eligible to work in have open day shift positions. Sleep: My landlord operates an AirBNB out of the unit below mine. If I slept on a normal schedule, this would not be an issue; However, the house I live in is very old. Any noises made in the AirBNB unit during the day reverberate through the framing of the house and echo in my bedroom. When I was interviewing with my landlord, I made it very clear that my primary concern was having a quiet space, and he assured me that his house is very quiet. It is, except when his wife cleans/turns over the unit for new guests, in which case it sounds like a tornado is ravaging the building. I can get no sleep these days and when I ask her if she could please wait until 5pm on just the three days each week I tell them I need to sleep, her exasperated response to me was, "You can't control EVERYTHING that happens! I'm being as quiet as I can!" My issues: Barriers: I took a generous moving stipend offered by my hospital, but which I would need to repay if I were to leave before working with them for 1 year. While I think that I would be able to get a couple of charge nurses to write me decent recommendations, I worry about leaving so soon and how that looks on future job applications. My landlord would charge me $3K to break my lease before a year, and I am completely unable to pay rent without the high hourly rate I receive from my hospital. I can not go on like this. My migraines are back with a vengeance and my mental health is slipping dearly. My anxiety is spiking, my perceived mental sharpness and ability to handle conflicts is decreasing greatly at this point. I feel less confident at work and am taking things too personally in my personal life. I feel constantly sleep deprived and I feel like I have been sick with upper respiratory issues without respite for months now. I fear that my life is falling apart and I attribute it mainly to feeling absolutely stuck with nowhere to go and nowhere to turn. Possibilities: (most likely to help at top): I get switched to day shift at my current hospital. This has an extremely low likelihood of happening but it would solve the most problems for me with the least amount of consequences. I would be willing to take an assignment pretty much anywhere if it meant not working nights. There is nothing my current hospital can do and I stay there anyways, persevering until August when I leave without having to pay back any of my moving stipend. I get a therapist and try to remain sane until I am able to get out of my lease and job without paying fees. There is nothing my current hospital can do and I quit early. I have to pay about $1000 back to them. I get a job for the next few months as a local traveler to avoid breaking my lease early. What should I do? What have I not thought of? Thank you.

If I put myself in a patient/visitor's shoes, and if I would be grossed out to see me care for that patient, I stay home. Like I am tonight.

I'm generally searching: "(name of hospital), (city), 'tuition reimbursement'". Then I read about their policies and programs that are offered.

I am looking for hospitals that pay for a majority (if not all) of the costs associated with tuition and fees for their RNs to get a DNP while employed. I've done a LOT of research, and here is what I have found so far: - Rush in Chicago IL offers 100% tuition reimbursed at their own nursing school for any full-time employee of theirs up to 9 credit hours per quarter. - University of Missouri offers 75% tuition paid at their nursing school for hospital employees up to 6 credit hours per semester. - OHSU in Portland, OR offers 75% tuition paid for employees full time who have worked for them for 2 or more years. - St Charles Med Center in Bend, OR offers most of tuition paid for RNs taking masters/doctorate programs at OHSU via distance/online learning. That's it so far... A lot of hospitals offer $600-$5000 per year of assistance with regard to tuition for their nurses, but in today's academic landscape, that money is hardly anything compared to the total cost of getting a DNP. Thought it would be helpful as well if we had an updated thread about this. Thanks!

You need to provide some more information about yourself if you want help determining if travel nursing might be "detrimental" to you. Travel nursing is great for certain people in certain situations, but for others it would be a nightmare. The worst-regarded agency out there is American Mobile (AMN). Stay away from them at all costs. I would be happy to help answer further questions about traveling but they need to be explicitly asked with some context.

Very well thought-out. I appreciate your insights to the world of PA and how they relate to NP, both now and in the foreseeable future. Best of luck to you.

I am an ICU nurse looking to possibly transition out of the bedside role but not leave it entirely. In my job search, I recently found the following job: RN - Anesthesia Job in Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital at Cottage Health It's a job for an RN to basically assist the anesthesia team with inserting lines, sedating and preparing patients for procedures, as well as setting up OR rooms for the physicians. It sounds like a really interesting job, so I am curious if anyone else has heard of this? It is in California at a hospital that is very well staffed, so I am guessing that elsewhere these tasks just fall to ICU or OR nurses. The reason I can't apply for this particular opening is because their HR person told me that it only opens up once every 12-18 months, and that it always gets filled by internal applicants.

This is an interesting viewpoint I hadn't considered... It doesn't take too much effort to log onto a website and type in a credit card and an address for delivery. But I see your point, will not be doing it, and thank you for your advice!

Thanks for the advice. I don't want to 'look guilty' and I certainly am legitimately sick right now, so I guess I will simply stay home and recover. If someone gets upset at me for calling in this weekend, I can show them my trash bags full of kleenex. Also, yes, I am a relatively new nurse. I have about 8 months experience at the moment. I used to be a teacher, and when I would get sick and call in as a teacher, I had no trouble with it because I knew they'd get a sub and I had an alternative lesson plan for my students ready to go. But as a nurse at an understaffed hospital, I always feel awful when I call in because I know I'm making it more difficult for my coworkers and supervisors to figure out how to cover for my absence.

I just got back from a 5-day camping trip last week, worked two days, and then came down with one of the worst colds of my life! I had to call in sick yesterday and today, and each day my supervisors sent out desperate sounding emails asking if any RNs would come in to help out. I don't call in sick often at all, but our census is high and my supervisor has done a really great job balancing the schedule so that we all got the days off we requested. so now I feel bad, and even though there really is no way I could work in the ICU in my current condition, I feel guilty for calling in. Especially because on Thurs I leave for another trip, and this sickness will probably just have gotten better for it. I I was thinking of calling a bakery to deliver fresh baked cookies for my coworkers this afternoon with a note about how grateful I am to have coworkers who help cover each other like they did for me today and yesterday. I want them to know I appreciate them. I feel bad about having to call in despite being legit sick.

That's the way I did it and I got solid A's in both. Just be prepared to work and study hard. They are both challenging in different ways. You can definitely do it though!