Very Excited :)

Have you gotten a start date yet? I got my official ok for 11/30 last Thursday right before the end of their day. She had told me that morning that there were a few still waiting for final approval and since she knew I needed to get my 2 wk notice in last week so I could have a weekend off before I started down there.

Jax

Hello Jax :)

Started on the 16th with one other LVN and an RN. Spent the week going through a mountain of paperwork and watching videos. The place is fascinating.....

I now have six weeks of training scheduled, and am going to be shifted around so I learn all of the departments. Don't know yet what my final job will be.

Good luck to you on the 30th. Most of the employees here seem to love their jobs.

wow 6 weeks of training? I am impressed, most places seem to give you a week or so and then throw you to the wolfs. How many days are you working and what hours? All I know is I start on Monday at 8am and will get my schedule from there.

Hello Jax :)

The first week I and another LVN and an RN came in on Monday at 8, had a half hour for lunch and left at 4:30. The next three days in at 7 am and left at 3:30. On Friday we came in at 8 am. There is a tremendous amount of paperwork to be done. It is truly amazing.

This second week the times have varied. It depends on whatever job they are orienting you on. On Monday I went with a nurse and we covered RTQ (restricted to quarters) inmates. It was a lot of running around on the tiers and in different parts of the prison. It is a large place and you do a lot of walking. Hope you have good shoes!

Tuesday I worked Central PCP line. Thats in a doctors office calling in patients, taking vitals and doing paperwork. There was a potluck for the personnel which was nice.

I have Wednesday, today off. Then I work tomorrow, from 6 am to 2 pm, then come back again at 10 pm and work until 6 am. On the schedule they gave me it is the only time I will be working a night shift. There are not many spots for LVN's on night shift.

Most of the positions I will be orienting to are pill lines. You sit at a window and pass pills to inmates. If there is a lockdown, you pack your pills and take them to the inmates in the different dorms.

Hope you have fun your first week in orientation. We didn't have to wear scrubs the first week, and some of the nurses don't wear scrubs, but dress nicely.

Let me know how you are doing :)

Thanks for all the info! I just went out and bought some new shoes today cuz I knew I would need them! I prefer to wear scrubs, part of why I wanted to be a nurse but she did tell me I could were regular clothes the first week since its mostly paperwork and stuff. I am so excited to get started, even if it is just passing pills, its so much better then the clerical work I have been doing!

Have you found anywhere to live down there yet? We are undecided about exactly where to move. I have not had much luck finding open things in my price range in Salinas that are in a good neighborhood for my kids so we started looking in Soledad itself and I think that is probably where we will end up moving to.

Hello, sorry this took so long Jax, won't have a computer till Xmas :)

I was told that Soledad and Greenfield were the places to look. The other areas are having gang problems, or so I've been told as I just said.

Greenfield is nice, about 10 miles south of Soledad.

Yes, very much preferable to what I was doing before, the pill lines are interesting.

I hope your first week is going well.

Ok so far, the nursing instructor and the other trainer were both out the last 2 days so we just toured and did videos. The paper work started today! Hopefully we will have a schedule for our training portion tomorrow.

It seems really interesting so far!

Jax