Redfish11

Some options to look into Research nursing. Depending upon the dept there is little to a lot of patient contact and it also depends upon the study. Some are more chart reviews and no patient interaction. Some have a good deal of patient interaction and phone calls. There is a lot of paperwork that you have to deal with in this line of work. Another option is working in the OR as a scrub and/or circulating nurse. You work with one patient at a time. Depending upon the place and surgery it can be hectic. But as the nurse since the majority of patients are asleep the majority of the time you work with them you don't get to know your patients that well. You work as the patient's advocate to make sure that they are positioned correctly so no injury happens, that the correct procedure happens, ext. There are lots of hospital systems that have new to the OR programs that take new grads and nurses who worked on the floor. I would try to see if you could spend a day in the OR observing, an hour or two does not really let you see the whole process. As far as bedside nursing, I am with you I never wanted to work on a unit in which 6-7+ patients to care for. I did my year working on a step down unit (heart and lung transplant) and typical ratios where 4 pts or less for the day and 5 or less at night. We had a few LPNs at night so you would have one pt with them (so that made the 5th patient easier to care for). The good thing about step down is that the patients are less fragile than icu for the most part (some times they deteriorate and you have to send them back to the icu). Being on a transplant unit we got people waiting for a transplant, post icu/fresh transplants, and patients back in the hospital for any reason (colds/flu for the most part, though some people in rejection). Depending upon what type of patients we had they tried hard to balance pts who needed more care with pts who needed less. Overall I loved the patient population. I will be honest with you the farther you get from graduation and not doing a year bedside it makes it harder to transition into different kinds of roles later in your career. But it can be done, you just typically have to deal with more nos than yeses. Make sure to use the resources that you have. Talk to the managers and the nurses about what they think about working in a traditional nursing position out of school. They might be able to create a position for you or be willing to teach you things you need to know.

I do not know much about extended stay hotels in the area but I work for the Clinic, but I figure you will be working for UH which basically are neighbors. The rent is high really close to these hospitals (due to being a college area) or can be scary because both hospitals are not really in super safe areas. Lots of people that work at CCF or UH live in Cleveland Heights, Shaker Heights, University Heights, or Beachwood (all to the East of the hospitals). All of these areas would be typically less than 25 mins. West of the hospital like Lakewood tend to be longer commutes but that is also an ares lots of people live. Lots of landlords list their properties on Craig's list. You also might want to contact a realtor as the have the ability to also show rental properties. Hope this helps.

CCF does $5000 for full time or $2500 for part time a year. However you have to agree to work for a year post reimbursement (or repay the money). You have to have good job performance evals. You also have to be able to write job goals (IDP) that support your reason to take the classes. So depending on your boss or unit they might not agree to pay for the classes.

For those of you who interviewed from out of state. Is there a hotel that is close that you would recommend?

Wanderlust2205 - what are the Tues and Thurs "chats"? How do you access them?

Research money is extremely tight, so most Doctors can not afford to pay anyone. So as long as you are okay with not being paid, make sure that you tell them that. The best way to find labs or individuals doing clinical research (besides networking) is to look through the research sections of websites and approach anyone who is doing research that you are interested in. Also I would look up the physicians at teaching hospitals in the departments that you are interested in Pubmed to see if and what they have published. If their research is interesting contact them. If you find someone to take you on they will push through all your paperwork. Starting with HR almost never gets you anywhere as they are worried about filling paid, long term positions. The applications almost never trickle down. Hope this helps.