Plus ca change...

Two lifeflight traumas, three psych patients, an ICU admit whose AICD kept firing in the ED, and two obnoxious drunks. Not a bad first orientation shift on a new assignment.

Nice to be back home.

"How the hell do you not get burnt out doing this?"

I really, really enjoy my job.  (When I get to do it. The three dozen things a shift that have jack and squat to do with actually caring for patients still suck my soul out.)

There's always bad shifts, even bad weeks, but when I catch myself getting overly grumpy about it, I make a mental game out of kicking its @$$.

Life really is 10% what happens to you, and 90% how you decide to feel about it. I realized it's a lot more fun going through life as the cat than as the litter box.

And when it's time for time off, GTHO and have fun. (Also, if you never go away, they never miss you. Really.) At least one county away by car is great; if it involves a plane ride somewhere else, so much the better. This year I'm picking off the 27 states I've never been to - and probably finally getting the (online, now!) BSN they swore I couldn't live without as a nurse - by 1995 (snort!). Next year, I'm either doing countries, or destinations. I want to see what a full passport looks like.

But after a week, 10-14 days tops, I start getting twitchy to get back to work. I've never not had a job (except during part of college) since I was 13.  That's mumblemumble an awfully long time, so force of habit there as much as anything else I suppose. Total days, lifetime, on any sort of state unemployment, zero. Trabajo. Period.

BTW, assuming someone does 3x12hr shifts weekly, if you pick up 1 extra shift/wk at a different facility, you network, see how other people do things, have a fallback job when your main gig craps out on you (and they will!), and you have about 20-25% after taxes of your annual pay in your hand as your Better Life slush fund if you simply put it in a jar every payday. I highly recommend it for anyone with 5+ yrs. experience. That's vacation, retirement, a down payment on a mortgage, or a new car, in return for one extra set of clean scrubs every laundry day. Times the rest of your career, that's one helluva better place to be in. Wish I'd started doing it ten years sooner.

One other thing: if you have an ounce of discipline, keep a shift log.
E.g., I'm about to embark on a 13-week contract. Or, 39 shifts. Potentially, as many as 65. Whatever.
But if you'd like to put what you do in perspective, start a little tally:
Say, something like : 4 GSWs, 19 MVCs, 42 MIs, 23 CVAs, 37 hot appys, 59 fractures, 107 psychs, 317 FDGBs, 81 peds, 126 admits, and a little boy with a toy soldier up his nose.
1423 doctor's orders implemented, 917 meds passed with no errors, 182 IVs started, 12 NG tubes, 56 foley caths, 918 phone calls, and 2 teddy bears successfully returned home with their smiling owners.
It lets you see just what an actual difference you make, and it's a metric fuckton more persuasive than the jacked up ratings on annual evaluations if you want to point out what you've actually done for your facility, if you're there long enough for an annual evaluation and raise discussion.
Trust me on that.

Like that slush fund, consider the tally another way of paying yourself first.

Too Much Free Time? Moi??

 

 

Glutton For Punishment

Working ten to fifteen consecutive shifts consistently just wasn't challenging enough (no, really). So for even more greenbacks, I'm picking up a contract at a county teaching hospital/trauma center. In July. Just after the fresh residents have hit the floor. The phone interview, where they told me they love registry and travelers because they use so many, and that there are always plenty of overtime shifts to pick up, tells me that they're either stupid, or don't realize what that means to me is that most of their staff is new/short-term/swamped, so I'll pretty much be on my own once they take off my training wheels. Otherwise they wouldn't be glad to get people, and paying top dollar to make it happen.

Except unlike the last time I did this, this time with fluent Spanish and nearly 15 years of ED experience. (Note: never start a new ED job on 9/11/01, or amidst any other world-changing terrorist attack, if you can help it. Just saying.) This should keep me ahead of the residents. But I'll probably renew the contract a time or two if things work out. Because seriously, every time I start a new one, the 16-hour marathon of compliance modules on the computer, either there or here at home, is a total buzzkill.  If there were an option that would let me skip the modules and substitute just being punched in the junk for half an hour while being tazed, I'd really have to think about which way to lean.

Which will be inevitably followed by more hours of orientation, that mostly just provides rent for the people in HR who lead orientation. But somewhere I have a book on Korean War POWs resisting brainwashing sessions, so I'll be brushing up on those tips beforehand, and working on keeping a slightly bemused look on my face, just to be ready for the first day of school before I hit the department.

Life should always be an adventure.

Good Times

Just minding my own business, and been working my @$$ off.

A few random notes to self:

I really like my job. Not to get all Pollyanna and all, but most days, it's a fantastic reason to get up in the morning (although my morning is usually 5PM-ish).

I can work 10-day weeks. That's either stamina, or psycho-neuropathy.
The youngsters ask "How can you work so many days?"
Try unemployment for a stretch, kid. Overwork beats underwork by a country mile, and it's one helluva lot more fun when you visit the bank.

Time off is even better. Usually I've had time and no money, or money and no time.
Having time and money at the same time is positively fabulous.
I highly recommend this option.

It really cuts down on the BS at work when you're at work 2-3x more often than anyone on staff.

It also cuts down on the whining from other people about how hard their life is.

When you take some days off after a marathon stretch at work, they're just magically better.

A special bonus is that when you take those off days, they realize how much you've been doing.
If you don't go away once in awhile, they can't miss you.

Always remember, you can like your job.
But NEVER love your job.
Because it will never love you back.

Also remember that the way employers tell employees that they like them is in your paycheck. Balloons and cupcakes for Nurse Week don't pay your rent, or buy your tickets to Hawaii, Vegas, or Disneyworld. Money does that. If your employer isn't paying you whatever top dollar is in your area, all protestations to the contrary notwithstanding, they don't like you.

If you think you're indispensable to your employer, check your assignment list ten minutes after you're fired, laid off, or have your days cut.

Always have a spare job in your back pocket that you can expand into a full-time substitute gig until things settle down. For the same reason you should have a spare tire in your trunk, and a fire extinguisher in your kitchen. You want to have it, but you hope you never need it. Until you really need it, right now. Don't wait until it's too late to find that out.

A work-at-home thing that generates cash flow isn't a bad idea either.

Always have at least one entire month's expenses squirreled away, in cash, somewhere you can get to 24/7/365. "In the bank" doesn't count: banks close, earthquakes and hurricanes knock power out to ATMs, etc. etc. That wad should be sitting in a fire safe under the bed, or rolled up in a ziplok baggie inside mayo jar in your pantry or buried in the rose garden, or somesuch.
Where you can get it if you have to hit the road at 3AM, or your employer shuts down with no notice, or the transmission falls out on the freeway, or whatever.
With a handy lump of greenback cash where you can lay your mitts on it now, without fail, you can solve small to moderate problems, or buy yourself time to think your way out of an emergency, and keep it from becoming a catastrophe.

Go places you haven't been, do things you haven't done, and talk to people you wouldn't normally talk to. (Not in a babbling homeless schizophrenic off his meds kind of way.) But be sociable, and explorative, and the world stays new, while your brain grows.
The alternative is dragging same-old same-old tracks in your daily rut, getting Alzheimer's, and then sitting in the same-old same-old forever, and just thinking you're going new places and meeting new people. Because one day your mind got bored and left town without you.
Option A is vastly more fun than Option B.

That's enough musing for the moment. I need to get some sleep, because I've got another busy day playing in the sun planned again for tomorrow.