- Pregnancy
- Baby & Toddler
- Parents
- Getting Pregnant
- Baby Names
- Product Reviews
-
Registry
- Community
-
More
Want a personalized experience?
Download the free app
Working Moms
steph0501
member
Nurses
steph0501
member
in Working Moms
I am currently working 3 12s and sometimes 2 12s and one 8. We all know how nursing goes, 12s are 14s and 8s are 10s. I am currently a supervisor and tired of overloading my staff with high patient loads b/c administration is pushing admits. I love the people I work with but ever since I was back from leave, it is really bugging me.
I just applied for a weekender position at a local hospital. It's about a block from my house. (My current job is only a 15 minute drive though) I would work 2 12s every saturday and sunday. Its in ICU so I (hopefully) won't get bored. It is considered part time but the pay would be near what 3 12s would pay me. Benefits are more, but are 100% if you go to that hospital. Right now, my insurance covers 80% with a $1500 per person/ $3000 per family deductible.
I currently LOVE my ob/gyn and my pedi, but they aren't at my prospective job. I don't know yet whether I could have the opttion to go elsewhere at 80% or not.
What would you do? Is the decrease in hours worth working every weekend/benefit changes/starting all over at a new job? I really love my coworkers now and I would probably stay PRN and I don't want to disappoint my coworkers and bosses. I guess I am nervous for change and want to know, WWYD?
Sorry for bad grammar, bumping while nursing LO.
<a href="http://www.thenest.com/?utm_source=ticker&utm_medium=HTML&utm_campaign=tickers" title="Home D
This discussion has been closed.
Re: Nurses
I am a nurse and my advice to you after having changed jobs after having my baby a year and a half ago is that you have to do what's right for your family. Yes, starting over was hard and I do miss my coworkers but my job now works for my family. I don't love it but who loves their job 100%? You are ALWAYS going to have the pressure of administration and making money over your head in any setting, especially healthcare and in this economy. But, on the other hand, you have to put yourself first not care what your coworkers may think. does your husband work mon-fri or does he work off shift? As the previous poster said, weekends are usually busy with family time. yeah it may work now to work weekends that your baby is little, but what about when they are older and have sporting events, etc... on the weekends. It's a hard decision but just know that the grass isn't always greener on the other side
Thank you both for the input. I know the grass isn't always greener, so I think that is making me second guess myself. My husband works every monday, tuesday and thursday. I now work every wednesday, friday and saturday. The weekend schedule would give us more time as a family, so I would like that. I know the weekends are busy, but right now it isn't busy with things we couldn't do during the week. When DS gets older, I do realize that there will be more weekend activities that I will need to go to, but I would have the opportunity to apply for 3 12s or 4-5 eights if I wanted in a few years.
Working weekends isn't exactly ideal for my social life, but I believe that right now it may be better for my family. It's a tough decision. I really do like my job when it is good, but right now with the way the patient loads have been and turnover of good nurses, it makes me not like it as much. I think I just need to put together a good list of questions for the interview and hopefully that will make my decision easier!
Well, you can take all of this with a grain of salt....but this is coming from a nurse who did weekends-only for three years, so I will give it to you straight!
I think the schedule can work out wonderful for someone with a family. When I first chose this same schedule (Sat/Sun every week), it worked out well. I was home Mon-Fri with the kids, so I was able to do school dropoffs, pickups, sick kids were not an issue, preschool, errands, etc. DH works a Mon-Fri traditional hours job, so he could go in early, stay late, have meetings, etc, without a conflict. I made more money, things got into a routine, and I was not too bummed about missing things on weekends (baby showers, birthday parties, weddings, etc) and took time off for really important events.
After a year or so, I felt like things were settled, but *I* was not as happy. I started missing my weekends off, I wished I could do more "fun" actitivies with the kids instead of just school and homework all week, and my husband and I were at each other's throats on Sunday nights prepping for our week ahead. My house would get trashed every weekend, I would spend Sundays and Mondays catching up, and be bitter and resent my job. I literally would come home on Sunday mornings and start crying because I knew that NOTHING got done all weekend and it was my job to put it all back together before Monday. DH and I had a few talks, and things would get better for a week or two, then fall apart again. It was getting stressful to be gone all weekend, every weekend.
On year #3 (the suck it up year) I just sucked it up because the schedule was working FOR MY FAMILY. Not for me. I was a miserable wreck. I dreaded going in to work on Friday nights, I hated Sundays because I was done working and back "on" the clock at home all week, DH was not pitching in nearly enough, and I had enough. I was extra senstive, super crabby, and was prone to pitching a fit about everything and anything.
I recently switched back (in September 2011) to my every other weekend schedule, and it's working out well. Honestly, the hardest part for me has been that I "ran" the household Mon-Fri for years, and the weekends were DH's domain. Well, his idea of managing the household included pizza, fast food, and movies nonstop....along with sometimes taking the kids to sports and occasionally doing some work around the house. Now, when I am home on the weekends, I am "running" the show by planning activities, making sure clothes are out and ready, and staying super organized....the same way I had to be during the week. There have been a few knock down drag out power struggles over the way I am used to doing things vs. his. We have reached some compromises (a dinner out on Saturday night or no chores on Sundays) but I can tell that he is not happy with having me home on weekends because I don't let everyone lounge around in pajamas eating garbage and with the television blaring.....it's been interesting to say the least.
We made it work while we could, but if asked if I would do it again, I would say yes....for six months to a year. That's it. Three years is way too long and wore on my sanity. It actually has hurt my family life in the long run, because now my kids are confused when I am home and planning things because "dad let us stay in our pajamas all day" or "dad let us eat pizza whenever we wanted." If my husband and I were on the exact same page with parenting/responsibilities, it would have worked much better, but I had to let some things go and not be such a control freak, and now I feel like I am paying the price.
It was/is a great perk to nursing to have positions like this available, and my replacement person loves doing weekends only right now. I will happily admit I like my weekend on/weekend off schedule and it actually makes my DH step up and do more, like weekday dropoffs at school, and I feel like things are more "fair" now. I did not like feeling like I had to pull 90% of the weight by being home all week. I would suck as a SAHM, that's for sure.....
Thank you so much for this. I can picture my husband doing what you said your husband did. I would like to think that he would be more motivated, but it's hard to say since our son is only 3.5 months old. You gave me a lot to think about, for sure. Its nice to hear the prospective of someone that has been there before.
I think that eventually I would want to go back to a more "regular" schedule when I have more kids and DS is school age. When you did the weekender program, how many weekends per year were you allowed off?
I did weekend cadre, part time, and I got two weekends off each six month contract....so four shifts. That meant I could take four Saturdays off or four Sundays off or two full weekends, whatever I wanted, but it was a total of four shifts every six months. That's pretty strict. When it was first implemented, I also could not have another nurse switch with me at all or cover my shifts....my last two contracts, we were allowed four shifts off every six months and two switches, so that was a little bit better.
It was hard to plan in advance for those days off, because one summer I had my godchild's baptism out of state, and needed a full weekend off for that, and then we had two weddings and another big family party that summer, so I had to pick which event to go to and what to miss....
It was a lot easier when my children were small because they didn't have "friend" birthday parties or sports on weekends, etc.
I also wish, in hindsight, that I would have discussed with DH before we signed the first contract how long I planned on doing it, what our financial goals were for the extra money, and how we would handle weekend chores and household responsibilities. We had a brief talk about a few key items, like using money to pay off our car and finishing our basement, and we stuck to those goals, but by the time we had a really honest discussion about household chores and things, it was too late and I was stuck living with things being done his way every weekend....it's made it so much harder to "readjust" our lives so that both of us are home on weekends and things run smoothly.
I will admit, my first two weekends I was home with my family were AWFUL. The kids didn't know how to act, I planned a ton of activities because I was finally home with them and wanted to enjoy every second, and DH told me that he wished I were back at work so he could "relax". I bawled. We had two weekends of pure doom before we sat down and talked about it and had to come up with a better plan.
Like I said, it has a lot of perks and a lot of cons either way.....I think it worked out really well for us for the first year or so! Also, be prepared for your DH to have some complaints of his own, the first few months were a little hard because DH would work out of the house Mon-Fri, and then have both kids all weekend while I worked or slept. He said it was really hard to keep them busy and quiet while I was sleeping, but he also didn't want to take them places, so they were home a lot. I also felt like I should sacrifice sleep for some family time, so I would meet them at church after working all night, fall asleep in church, and get NOTHING out of that experience. Or sleep 2-3 hours in order to go to a birthday party at noon and be exhausted that night and have to go back to work or be in bed by 7:30 pm. There was not a lot of downtime for me, and even less for DH, with this schedule. Not a lot of friends wanted to go to a movie with me on a Tuesday night at 7:00 pm, but a few did, and DH's running events that he loves were always on weekends and we would be scrambling for babysitters....
All things considered, like I said, I would do it again for a shorter time and I would really, really plan ahead and talk things over more thoroughly. Good luck!