Caniac4ever

What an interesting post! I am in a similar situation, but in reverse. I currently live in North Carolina and work in outpatient surgery. All of my family lives in Michigan and at some point I think I would like to move back to be closer to them. I don't really have any advice for you..... for myself, I'm not sure I would be happy going back to hospital floor nursing after having "normal" people hours in my outpatient surgery position. So, until something opens up work wise in Michigan that I'll enjoy, I just keep thinking about it. So no, I guess to answer your question, I wouldn't give up a position I'm happy in until I had something else equally good or better lined up.... unless I was miserable otherwise in my life. Good luck!

I have to agree with brownbook above... working in ambulatory surgery pre/post op is kind of a no brainer job in my experience. I work mostly in the PACU side and the vast majority of the time all I do is push pain and/or nausea drugs. That said, I am very happy with my job. It can get a bit boring, but for the most part the quick pace, variety of cases, and quick turnover of patients keeps you from getting too bored. It can be a bit challenging to get into tho, at least in my area, as it is a coveted position. Many of the nurses have been there for 20+ years and have no intentions of leaving until the day they retire. Good luck!

Greatly appreciate your responses! I'm one that deals with test anxiety (I'd far rather run a code in the ER than take another nursing exam) and couldn't find much info about the exams out there.... so thank you again.

Frequent reader, but just signed up so I could ask a few questions... I am seriously considering going the RN - BSN route through WGU. I have researched for months and really like the idea of doing the program at my own pace. However, I do have a few questions if someone that has gone through the program would be so kind as to answer them. 1) I believe I should have most, if not all, of my prerequisite classes completed so am in hopes I can jump right in to the actual nursing content. Do those classes require proctored exams or webcams? I'm a bit confused if that is for prerequisite classes only or for all classes throughout the program. 2) Still on exams... what are the exams for the nursing classes like? Timed? Multiple choice and/or multiple response? Open book? How many are there for each class on average? And also, I read somewhere that if you don't pass an exam you pay a fee to retake it... any truth to this? 3) Writing papers... I have done enough paper writing to not be too intimidated by this part of the program, but would like to have a rough guess on what the average length of the papers are. Are we talking 5 page papers or 50 page papers? Thank you ever so much for any insight!

In my little corner of North Carolina they hire more ADN nurses than BSN. However, what they do care about is experience... it can still be hard for a new grad to get in just because of the lack of experience and the time and money they will have to invest in you. Good luck!