Moving Day

As of today, I am moving my blog to a new host. This is being done primarily because the new location is where most of the blogs I am fans of are located as well as the fact that the new location allows me more personal freedom in design. With that being said, I will also move all of my posts from here to there. Here is my new home on the web:

NEW BLOG

Not too different now, is it.

Change is a good thing

I started this blog to make clear my feelings about the health care system, it’s reform and how to repair it. Those feelings have not changed, however I find there is a lack of new subject material. As I have been reading and following other nursing and medical blogs, I have decided to change the focus of this blog to my experiences as an RN. I work only PICU, Pediatric Intensive Care, for those non-medical types reading this. I also work as a traveller, so I move from city to city every 3-6 months. I will still post on political topics as the motivation strikes me, but no longer wish to restrict my writing to only those topics. I hope this new direction is a change for the better. I think it will be as I feel I will now be able to post more regularly and more generally about whatever may be on my mind on any given day. With that in mind, I am off to work on my next post. I cannot promise everyday as I have a full life with work, a wife and a two sons, 4 and 5, but will promise to do better than every 2 months. (where the h*ll did that time go).

On the Road Again

The life of a travel nurse.  I am currently sitting in a hotel en route from the DC area to Phoenix, AZ.  I have to report to work in Phoenix next Monday and can move in to my apartment on Friday.  My goal is to be there on Friday.  It will be nice to spend the winter in Phoenix, though travelling cross country, 2300 miles, with my 2 sons, 4 and 5 yrs old, is a challenge in and of itself.  Also just shipped 12 boxes of clothes, etc. to myself as we have more than our poor little Camry can carry.  What an adventure this will be.  This time, instead of the county hospital in Phoenix, I will instead be working at the children’s hospital.  It will be interesting to see if there is much difference.  I started out traveling for many reasons, one being that having worked at Duke Hospital for my entire nursing career, I wanted to see if their ego was deserved.  To some degree, it is, but it mostly has to do with volume and experience.  We, my wife and I, also felt that with our children being the age they are, that now is the ideal time to do this.  They are old enough to appreciate what is happening, yet young enough to not have all the ‘I don’t want to leave my friends’ concerns.  For all the stress that moving every 13 weeks causes, I wouldn’t trade it for the world.  From a nursing perspective, it is heaven.  I do not get involved in the ‘politics’ of the hospital or unit I am working on.  I go to work, do my job and go home.  There is the downside of having to learn new systems, processes, etc. every place I go, but I treat it as a learning experience.  So, all in all, I come in, help fill staffing holes, ignore the pettiness of politics and have fun doing what I do.  All this and I, unfortunately, get paid more than the full-time employees.  Through all of it, my agency is my employer, so in a resume sense, I am not changing jobs at all.  I will continue to update on the ups and downs of traveling as time allows.