Relocating: Need insight to Pittsburgh's Hospitals

RNstudent05 · Jul 26, 2005

No replies

Well, here is another question...anyone know of any Critical Care Fellowships offered to new grads or Fellowships for OB?

NurseyBaby'05, BSN, RN · Jul 26, 2005

I just saw your post. UPMC has a facility in South Side. You will be 30-45 minutes away from St. Clair depending on traffic. However, their seem to treat their nurses pretty well. (Definitely an important consideration.) They are expanding their OB area. Since you will be in south side, you will be pretty centrally located to all of the major hospitals in the area. Mercy is a 15 min drive. Oakland is about 10 minutes away. Most of UPMC's major facilities are there. Magee is one of the better known for OB. Mercy and West Penn have OB as well. West Penn has a nice NICU too. You will also not be far from the VA facilities. It may not be a bad place for med-surg and the benefits are awesome. No sign on, but they pay for higher education for the promise of employment. You also start out with four weeks vacation.

As for UPMC's reputation, there are other facilities that pay a little better or have better benefits packages, but it really depends on what you are looking for. I decided against them because their orientation time was about half of what I am getting at the facility where I am at now and I'm in a less acute unit to boot. The pay where I am at is slightly higher, 0.25-0.50 maybe, but at that small of a difference, it was really secondary to me. I also liked having the option of a 36 hour/3 day week. However, if you are planning on continuing your education at Pitt then you may want to consider working for UPMC. I think they have a better tuition agreement worked out with Pitt than other facilities do. UPMC's "tuition refund" AKA sign-on has a longer committment than other facilities. When I spoke to them it was a 36 month committment and none of it was pro-rated. In other words, if I left @ 35 months I would have to pay them the entire amoung back plus a fee. Other facilities offer their tuition forgiveness on a pro-rated basis. 15% when you start, 15% when you pass boards, 20% after 12 months as a RN and 20% after 24 months as a RN. If you would decide to leave after 18 months as a RN, you are only responsible for paying back the portion you received @ 12 months. The other two portions are yours to keep.

Like I said, it really depends on what your long and short-term goals are. What I found most helpful was calling the nurse recruiters and speaking to them 1 on 1 as oppossed to at a job fair or the like. Of course, no matter when you talk to them, they're going to be in "sales mode", but they weren't trying to snag you before you talked to the person at the next table. The other thing I did was shadowed on the units where I interviewed. There was no "salesperson" there and I was able to see how the staff worked together.

Sorry for my long-windedness, but I hope some of this info helped.:)