The RN Travelogue

A few good developments have been happening on our end. A few days ago, I actually had an interview with the manager of the surgical unit of the hospital in Wisconsin that we were considering. It went quite well, mostly a half hour of buttering each other up. The manager spoke with a strong Wisconsin accent, doncha know? I found that tremendously humorous, although I didn't share my thoughts with her. The unit itself sounded very good, very well run and managed, with a lot of new experiences and types of patients waiting for me. They need travelers, as I think I mentioned, because they are changing over to a computerized charting system and need to take off their staff to train them.

I was pretty optimistic about getting the assignment after the interview. Sure enough, our recruiter called the next day and said an offer had been made. There were just details on the contract to iron out. Then today, we spoke with our recruiter at length about the contract and hammered out our details. I did get an assignment in the surgical/trauma/medical ICU at the hospital I'll call the Cheese, and Jess landed herself in the PICU there. I've always heard so much about how negotiating is so important for travelers. Perhaps we just have a very good recruiter who helps max out our incentives, but negotiating never really seemed to play that much of a part in this contract.

For example, there wasn't really any room for negotiation on our wage, which will be $38/hr. I asked for shift differentials, but it wasn't even an option. Our recruiter offered the max on the travel benefit, which will score us $500 each to travel to this assignment (which is 1095 miles away from our currennt location). Our housing stipend may have been an area where I could have negotiated a little, but they offered one of us $1050, which taken with the $3 increase in hourly wage from what we make now, will actually be hundreds of dollars more monthly than what we make at the Y (where we get a $1600 housing stipend). I just didn't know how much to push for or when to push for it, especially after doing the math. So, we'll be making a fair amount more money, living in a state where gas prices average 40 cents less than here in Connecticut, which means that all cost of living expenses will drop as well.

At any rate, we got a pretty good deal. We don't know our living situation yet, which will be interesting, but it has turned out well so far. Jess and I both work until the 6th of August, and we will have until the 18th before we start. Personally, I would like to drive up to Madison, WI, then fly down and spend six days or so in Colorado before starting. That will have to be intricately planned, of course. Time will be tight.

In the meantime, I'm trying to think of what I'd like to see before we head out of New England for this year. We are planning a trip to Acadia Nat'l Park in Maine in a couple of weeks. There are also two weeks in this contract where Jess and I will literally have opposite schedules, so I am thinking that for one of the stretches that I have off by myself, I want to drive along the coast of Rhode Island up to Cape Cod, for the million photographical moments that would offer. I also wouldn't mind spending a day each in Hartford, Providence, and New York. Those can be quick day trips for when Jess is working. I am going to try to max out our last month in Connecticut without spending too much money.

At any rate, I had quite the interesting patient last night. He's a young guy, but a severe alcoholic, drinking several 40s (big bottles of beer) and a pint of Jack every day. Apparently he became fed up with his boozy lifestyle and decided to stop cold-turkey, not the best idea when your daily alcohol requirement is enough to knock down a mule. So, his girlfriend comes home and finds him seizing on the floor. Once he recovered enough to hold a can, he downed a six-pack of beer, just to stave off another seizure attack (actually pretty smart of him), got himself on a bus, and rode it to the ER. Suffice to say, he didn't fit in well with the staff on a floor unit, kicking and punching and swearing, so he ended up in my care, in four-point restraints and a restraint vest, on 15 mg of Ativan per hour, with liberal PRN doses of Ativan and Fentanyl (which was developed as a horse tranquilizer). For non-medical folks, our usual dose to sedate people is 2 mg, once. If you gave someone 15 mg, usually they would stop breathing. Not this guy, though. He still managed to talk a lot of smack through the night. Funny thing, though, I heard from another traveler about this crazy guy she'd transferred to my unit the night before, and I thought to myself, "I bet I get that guy." I hate when I'm right.

Until next time, be safe.