Deep Breaths... Deep Breaths...
Two years ago at this time, I was nearing graduation from Washington State University's RN to BSN program. As part of the requirements for my last semester of work, I had to put in roughly 100 clinical hours in a setting of my choosing which was new to me--and hopefully would turn out to be interesting as well. Since my earliest experiences in my first nursing program, I have found myself fascinated by the surgical environment, so requesting placement in that area seemed a natural choice. I was lucky enough to get my wish and spend my clinical hours in the Post Anesthesia Recovery Unit (PACU) at the same hospital at which I already work. Because I already knew my way around the facility and had access to nearly all of our systems, I required almost no orientation before I went hands-on. By the time I reached my last few days in that placement, I was doing nearly all of my precepting nurse's work for her. Additionally, I spent about two days in the OR observing various procedures and discussing what was happening throughout these procedures with the anesthesiologists and surgeons, at least one of whom I already worked with in my regular job. It was hands-down the best clinical experience I ever had. I learned a tremendous amount about the processes involved with going under the knife and coming out (relatively) unscathed and how all of these impacted my day-to-day work. I loved the pacing, the freedom the recovery RNs had to make necessary treatment decisions, and the readily available support of other RNs who were always literally a few steps away and very quick to respond in the event of a problem. I learned so much just from my two days in the OR that I was able to write most of my 20+ page final paper, on considerations specifically pertaining to abdominal and pelvic surgeries performed with robotic equipment--a post-operative population I frequently see on my unit--without needing to find sources to reference until after those sections were already written. By the time I graduated from my program, I was quite certain that I wished to eventually work in the surgical setting, be it in OR or PACU. Just yesterday, several positions were posted for scrub and/or circulating nurses in our hospital's OR suite. I was lucky enough to get the night off from work tonight, so I sat down and cranked out applications for every single one of them. How could this impact my plans for the year and the future if I land one of these positions? I'll have to wait and see how it all shakes out. Naturally, there are some upsides and some downsides. I do know this: All of these positions are day shift, which means I'll be able to get off the rather vampiric hours I already live on. I might actually sleep better when I get settled in to the new schedule due to the fact that this will eliminate the need for periodically switching between day and night sleep cycles. This would be a huge plus, for I am starting to find that living with a night shift schedule is becoming increasingly difficult. On the other hand, the night shift differential at my hospital is actually very significant. Night shift pays an additional $5.25 per hour, and I would stand to lose that income (about $5500 per year after taxes and various deductions). Additionally, Karli does not have the ability to switch to day shift yet on her current unit, and this means we would find ourselves living on opposite schedules for a while. It wouldn't be the first time we've had to do this because of changes at work, but I do distinctly recall how lonely that tended to be the last time we did. Oh, and when she does eventually switch to day shift, she'll lose her night shift differential pay as well. Ouch. TL;DR Version: An opportunity has very recently come up at my place of employment that I do not wish to pass on. I have reasons to be very excited about the possibilities and also a bit nervous. Now I wait and hope to get a phone call from the OR managers soon... - Nathan |
|
|
