(traveling) Operating Room Nurse

This weekend was spent in Monterey, living my best life. I drove up and down PCH 1, and had the best time!

Almost everyone has been nice to me so far (the occasional person gives me the cold shoulder for no apparent reason), and the way the hospital runs its ORs seems really effective. While the cafeteria food sucks, they seem to have plenty of people around to help keep the rooms running well. So yay!

Stay tuned, though. Things can always be deceptive, but I really hope I like it here.

My first travel assignment is coming to a close! While I’m glad for the experience, I’m ready to pick up my stuff and head somewhere else. I’ve already found my next assignment- I’m going to Visalia, California! It’s cow country. I’ve found my housing already, too! I’ll be making better money there, so hopefully I can squirrel away a good amount for a rainy day.

The people are nice, and I’ve met some really friendly doctors! I’ve also met some unfriendly doctors. The case load is really different from what I’m used to, considering I had almost no GYN experience when I started this assignment and now I feel a lot more confident. They do things very differently from my home hospital, which is weird but I’m adapting.

I spent the last two days following around a nurse and learning how they do things here. Almost everyone has been really nice! I feel a little better about it all after yesterday, where I survived five cases in a row. They use epic, which is very different from what I’m used to, but I’m getting faster with it.

It’s supposed to snow this weekend! I think I’m about to get dressed and walk to the coffee shop down the sidewalk. We’ve got a ton of orientation paperwork to do this weekend that I think we might try to tackle today.

They do things pretty differently from what I’m accustomed to. For example... they operate on young kids pretty often. Like, I saw several cribs. I don’t even know how to work a crib! How do you position a baby?!

Everyone has been really nice so far, and it’s so weird not having to wear my own scrubs! They hire a lot of travelers, which is either a good or bad thing... they said they lost a lot of staff due to political reasons? I’m not sure.

Either way, I’m hoping to absorb as much as I can this week and go in with a confident, ready to learn attitude. This can only make me a better nurse, right?