Your Favorite Job?

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So we see so many treads and posts on here about people complaining about their jobs, I thought it would be nice to start a thread where we can comment on what have been our favorite positions. I want to hear about what areas you all were working when you were truly satisfied with your job as a nurse. :nurse:

Specializes in Community, OB, Nursery.

Community health center working with low-income un/underinsured, mostly non-English speaking patients. High focus on migrant and seasonal farmworkers. I loved the hours (Mon-Fri, no weekends/holidays) but even if the hours had been different I'd have loved it. We did every type of nursing except prenatal/OB, and we tried to save people trips to the ER if we could, because we knew they couldn't afford it, and some had no transportation to get there. (Obviously, we knew our limits and wouldn't diddle around with chest pain or an appy, for example.) We did stitches, we I&Ded boils, we did IV fluids, it was great. I learned a ton about vaccines (and got good at them), we did routine well checkups, we did STD screenings, you name it. During the summer we went to migrant camps and did as many types of screenings as we could out there as well. Those were long, busy days but I enjoyed them! And I worked with an awesome medical director and a diverse bunch of people, whose primary goal was taking care of the patients....a gift any way you slice it.

I quit because I wanted more time at home with my son, who was a baby at the time. Hard decision, but the right one. I enjoy my current job but migrant/community health was my first love. :redbeathe

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Specializes in LTC, assisted living, med-surg, psych.

My favorite job was Director of Nursing Services in a 42-unit assisted living facility. The building was homelike and welcoming---you just got a good feeling when you walked in the front door. I learned more in the 2 1/2 years I worked there than I did anywhere else......talk about being stretched beyond your comfort zone, I learned all aspects of the business including the financial end, dietary, maintenance, even budgeting; but I also got to be as creative as I wanted to be, and I streamlined all of the nursing and delegation paperwork, which was so good that a state surveyor actually asked me for copies so she could show other facilities how it should be done.

Best of all, I had the chance to work with elderly residents at what, for most, was a great time of their later lives. Most of them were still alert and oriented, and I loved to just sit with them in their apartments and listen to their stories. I never get tired of older peoples' stories anyway---hearing about their romances, their service in The War, their child-rearing years is something I miss, because I was orphaned relatively early in life---and I whiled away many an afternoon doing quarterly assessments and listening to history as they lived it. AND I GOT PAID FOR IT!!!:redbeathe

Stupidly, I allowed myself to be drawn into the politics at the top management level, and it spoiled everything.......that, and I didn't know then that money wasn't everything. I moved on to another ALF that offered me $12,000 a year more right from the start, and promptly was driven to the point of near-lunacy by a passive-aggressive administrator and a system that set nurses up not only to fail, but to risk their license.

Now I'm just an itinerant LTC nurse, picking up shifts whenever possible and looking for something more permanent, even though I'm past my prime and have a few hitches in my getalong. I wish I'd appreciated that first ALF job when I had it and left the administrative stuff alone; but I was greedy, and I was dumb, and now I'm paying the price.

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Specializes in Med/Surg, LTC/Geriatric.

Part time position on a plastic surgical/general surgical ward. I did tons complicated VAC dressings, suture removal, drains and chest tube removal.

It was generally a younger patient demographic (60 and under), so they were mostly independant with care which made things a little easier.

Also, I :redbeathe my coworkers to pieces. Such a great team :)

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I have worked as an Arrhythmia Monitoring Technician for about 7-8 years and I must say that I have enjoyed every bit of time that I have been in the field. I started as an EKG technician and basically taught myself rhythms and cardiac electrical responses by going to the library. I am blessed to have worked at a hospital willing to teach me how to do EKGs and even more blessed to have tested well in my field.I enjoyed being able to interact with patients while doing their EKGs and more importantly being able to analyze rhythm. I am eager to become a nurse, but I am blessed to have started off as a TECH first. It isn't easy on this end, but it is glorious at times. :)

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Specializes in NICU, Psych, Education.

I'm in love with my current job in neonatal ICU at a large teaching hospital. It's the kind of place where a person could work for years and never see everything. Every day is a little bit different. One day I have a patient on ECMO and the next day I might be feeding patients by bottle. I love to teach and I get to do that daily - either with parents, students, new nurses or peers.

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