Job hunting

This isn't so much hunting for jobs as deciding which ones I'm interested in. I love my chosen career already.

My first step was to shadow at Strong Memorial Hospital here in Rochester. They require you to shadow on the unit you're interested in before you can apply for the job. So I scheduled two shadows for last Monday, first on general oncology from 7am-11am and then on the bone marrow transplant floor from 11:30 to 3:30pm. I walked over in the dark early morning with Sarah, since she was shadowing on labor and delivery, and we got shuttled off to our respective units by the nursing recruiters.

I was introduced to my nurse, and she whisked me off to meet her first patient for the day. She was assigned 4 patients, 3 of whom had blood cancers. As I followed her around throughout the morning I just got more and more amazed at how efficient she was. She never stopped moving the entire 4 hours that I was shadowing with her. She saw and assessed patients, administered medications, hung a platelet transfusion, prepared a patient for discharge, prepares a patient for a surgery, reassured family members, fed a man who couldn't use his hands, and still somehow found the time to help out anyone that asked her for anything. The most amazing thing was how she managed to go from looking completely frazzled to looking completely composed the moment she stepped into a patient's room. I want to be like her someday. At 11 I realized that I hadn't been able to ask her any questions about the unit, but there was nothign that could be done about it, so I ran off to get lunch.

After lunch I was taken up to the bone marrow transplant unit. I was met by the charge nurse and the nurse manager (aka the people that hire people) and they were both very welcoming and eager to talk to me. First the charge nurse sent me into a team treatment planning meeting. It was very interesting, especially since they discussed the 3 patients I had met that morning on the oncology unit. When I got out of the meeting I had a long list of questions for the charge nurse, and she answered them all. Then I got a quick tour and description of the unit. They have 12 beds, all in private rooms. They take all kinds of patients, including pediatric patients, with every imagine disease that might need a bone marrow transplant. They do both autologous and allogeneic transplants, and they even have 4 outpatient infusion chairs. After my tour, I followed a couple of the nurses around for most of the day, just doing standard nursing stuff. Then I got to watch and help with an autologous transplant, and that was really cool. I actualy like the vibe and atmosphere better on the this floor than the oncology floor, but I still can't identify exactly why. I just felt more at home, probably because it's so similar to 5C at OHSU.

I got to talk to the nurse manager about the hiring and orientation process a little bit. They usually take 1-2 new graduates each year, and spend 12 weeks doing orientation (most units do 6-8 weeks). Orientation means working 1 on 1 with another nurse and learning how to do the day-to-day job. After orientation they let you loose to work on the unit as a regular nurse for a while. At some point during the next year, they send new hires to the ICU for a while to get critical care training. They also slowly introduce new hires to working with the pediatric patients during their first year. What this means is that nurses from this floor are the best trained in the hospital, but they also want you to commit to a year of full time work at the time of hire.

The next step for me at Strong would be to submit an application and get an interview set up. I will do that soon, but want to get to know my current clinical instructor better first so she can write me a recommendation. Based on the feedback I got from both the recruiter and the nurses on the unit I'm pretty confident that I would be offered a job on at least one, if not both of those units if I apply.

Job hunting in Portland has also progressed a little. I contacted OHSU a while ago to ask about working on the BMT floor as a new graduate. They said that yes, they do hire new grads, but I should just apply online when I'm about 6 weeks away from taking my NCLEX. I don't like that answer for a couple of reasons. First, I'd like to shadow on the floor. Second, I hate the OHSU online application process and have never had any luck with it. It sucks. I got my last job there through the Willamette Career Center after submitting dozens of applications online. Third, I don't know when I'll be able to take my NCLEX because I can't do it until UR gets some paperwork to whoever administers the exam. It might be delayed by a month or more after graduation. At Strong, I can work as a graduate nurse until I get my RN, it doesn't sound like that's a possibility at OHSU.

Based on all of the above, my mom contacted Dr. Meyers, who knows me fairly well and has always been very supportive of my nursing career plans. She kindly offered to get me in touch with the appropriate people to help get me a job on the BMT floor at OHSU. I haven't heard back from her yet, but I only emailed her on Thursday, so I need to give her some time. I lov having inside connections.

I haven't looked at jobs elseewhere yet. I'm betting that I'll either be in Rochester or Portland for graduate school though, so there isn't a whole lot of motivation to look elsewhere. I might check out the hiring process at some hospitals in Philadelphia (more on that in the grad school post) but that's probably it for now. It is pretty exciting knowing that wherever I go I will be able to get work, but I'd like to know that I can get the kind of work that I want.