Monday, February 15, 2010

And now for something completely different...

I quit my job. I got a new job. I start next week.

I will be an outpatient hospice case manager nurse. I will be working Monday through Friday, daytime hours, no nights, no weekends, no holidays. I have heard rumors that this is the schedule that most people keep, being up and about during daylight hours, sleeping at night, and keeping somewhat "regular" hours. I haven't lived this way in nearly eight years, since I started nursing school, so this may be an interesting, if possibly difficult, transition. I actually feel completely ready and excited for this schedule change however, which is something I honestly never thought I would ever say. I loved nigh shift, I was a great "day sleeper," I loved having three to four days off a week, doing my errands in the middle of the week, going to the grocery store at 2am. But I sort of over that now. I'm over working interminable, often-grueling 12 hours shifts, the sore back, the aching feet, losing half my week to the sleep/eat/work routine with no room for anything else. I'm over inpatient-unit manglement policies and procedures and decisions, isolation gowns, and short-staffing headaches.

I'm excited for the new job, both for the schedule but even more so for the hospice work...more on that transition later. Maybe I should start a new blog, chronicling my adventures as a visiting hospice nurse, interspersed with my attempts at photography, my foray into vegetable gardening, and my efforts at cooking 660 different curries? Or maybe this is all just a natural continuation of Knitting in the Dark...?

4 comments:

Thoughts on Life and Millinery. said...

This is so weird...I was just searching for hospice blogs, since my traveling onc nurse daughter became a hospice intake nurse after she was finished traveling.

Your blog was the one I read when she first started traveling as a nurse. And here you are...here you both are, in hospice nursing. She has also been accepted into a Masters degree program. Any chance you will be tackling that as well?

rosebuttons said...

Thanks for reading my blog! How interesting that your daughter's and my nursing careers are on similar, parallel paths. I don't have any immediate thoughts of going back to school, but it's always in the back of my mind...

girl_in_greenwood said...

I for one am very interested in reading about your hospice adventures! It's an area I think I want to transition into and I'm curious to get an inside look, as it were. Congratulations!

Madeline said...

I was looking for nursing blogs... happy to have found yours. It's smart and irreverent and fun and I am thankful for your posting about duoderm windows:-) Please continue to write.