To New Beginnings

Eleutheromania: an intense and irresistible desire for freedom

Hey there :)

Here's another fun fact about me: I'm a nurse! I recently graduated college and started my career, which is of course way cool. I love being a nurse, but times are very rough right now.

With an overwhelmed medical system and hospitals (begrudgingly) refusing to implement measures to retain their staff, I thought that maybe now would be a good time to take a break from bedside nursing. So, the job hunt was on.

And I found a super cool new gig! I accepted a new job TODAY giving Covid vaccines. The pay is, and I wish I was exaggerating, double what I am currently making at a Magnet-accredited facility in a major city. I have been assigned to a local pharmacy that is much closer to home, has obviously better pay, and much more reasonable hours. I'm very nervous to be leaving a hospital that I've been employed with for years, but now is the time. This is also only a 5-month contract, in which I can rack up some money and experience.

I was blown away by how easy it was to set this job up! When I was in Nursing school, Covid was ramping up the entire time. This means that we would be deployed on our community health clinical rotation to local covid vaccination sites. Which, we were doing for free. However, it is also worth noting that a lot of these sites were relying on volunteer support from surrounding professionals at the time.

Can we just talk about that for a second as well? In a time where the community and media were full-on hero worshipping healthcare workers, the hospitals were laying us off. They were taking away our bonuses. I saw a pregnant nurse arguing with staffing because she was scared to float to the Covid ICU. There were no vaccines at this time. Personal protective equipment was low, which was our only lifeline against this thing. This was the beginning of the global pandemic in my area.

As another side note, hospitals are now copiously relying on travel nurse agencies to fulfill staffing needs. Nurses who have established careers are exhausted. We aren't being taken care of or retained. It sounds to me that the hospital would rather (with the desperate hope of it being temporary) pay double/triple for travel nurses than raise wages and incentives for existing staff. But what do I know, huh?

Just my two cents on the issue.

I digress. Back to the discussion at hand.

I have vaccine experience and accepted a cool new position because I have experience doing this exact role. Then, after that? The plan is to travel. Officially be a travel nurse, going from place to place. The goal is to make bank and be a medical nomad.

So today has been exciting :) I do not plan to discuss the specifics of my career often, but this is such an exciting new chapter for me.

I thought it noteworthy;

until next time friends.