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Let his be a warning to those who would like a job where you sit for nearly 8 hours a day and do nothing.
Don't do it!
I was a busy RN working on a stepdown unit for the last 4 years or so. I worked nights, and every weekend and probably most major holidays. The hours stunk, honestly, but the night shift differential and weekend rate made for a very nice salary. After a few years of lifting patients and not sleeping much at all on days anymore, I literally hit a wall where night shift was starting to cause health problems (I'm 46). As a result, I started browsing the in house jobs for the hospital I work at, and noticed a clinic job near home that was basically 8-4, no weekends or holidays. Long story short, I applied, interviewed, and was hired.
Fast forward a few weeks and here is my situation: I have nothing to do. The ARNP I work under has patients, but other than an occasional narcotic report or EKG, or vitals, there is absolutely little to do. So, I've gone from critical thinking and keeping people alive to maybe, on a good day, doing an EKG and talking to a patient on the phone. While my body feels a ton better, I feel absolutely useless and worthless. Did I mention the paycut? I'm making anywhere from 200-350 dollar less per check.
Bottom line is this. I've gone from a job that made me feel like I was useful and had meaning, although the hours were bad and I missed family events, daughter's ballgames to a job with cake hours, less money, and feel like a leech for sitting around and trying to occupy 8 hours of a day with nothing to do.
I so get this thread OP. I went from a hard charging manager, working 70-80 hour stress filled weeks to being “reassigned” my last two years before retirement to desk duty doing mundane things that nearly drove me crazy with boredom. I actually retired two years early just to escape the nightmare I was living.
My advice OP is to heal up and get back to doing what you know you love to do.
I am in the same situation OP. Left a crazy fast-paced position, working insane hours to a job that has very little stress and NORMAL working hours. Luckily, I am able to do online stuff and they also offer online training as well so I will take advantage of that.
There are days that I wish I was doing more, but then I think back on the toll my previous job took on my mental and physical health and I am grateful to be where I am at.
Good luck on getting your degree! Stay the course...
i hear ya!!! but with all that extra unused energy, you could volunteer back at that hospitals ER where truth be told, as i volunteered for over a year at the UNC ER until i could no longer take the sheer inhumanity of warehousing patients in the ER until a bed opens up, sometimes two full months later if it is a psych admission..... i tried to offer 6 viable alternatives and was fired as a volunteer for trying to change a system I was accused of not understanding.
no. i couldn't understand keeping a patient in a cubicle with no windows for two months, many of them dementia patients and people with no family to at least visit them a few hours a week!!!!
I believe every ER needs a dedicated volunteer who can show up regularly and can offer a listening heart, more than one or two kind words. The nurses who do all the work can't do it, they are overworked as you well know. Volunteer. please. the need is so great and you, having been a known entity with health care credentials could do so much more than lay person me with nothing but my huge caring gene. You could really make a difference.
In today's corporation (Hospitals are also corporations designed to make money) you can't have it all. It's usually either one or the other. Either you have a hectic role that pays a lot or a low key role that pays less. Work-life balance is a joke especially in Healthcare. However, Healthcare admin is probably the last bastion where you can sit on your bum and have an easy predictable schedule. Some RN roles are more like healthcare admin roles when you read the job description.
So what is more important. That extra 400-600 a month or your health and your children? Being you are a Mother I would say the latter. One thing I ask of today's Woman. A lot of you do not seem to apply the same gravity and weight of being a Mom as mothers in the past. Time after time I keep seeing the supermom theme. You cannot be a Career Woman and a Great Mom at the same time. Not in today's corporate environment which demands OT and all kinds of hours for certain roles. You got lucky and found a low key role where you can preserve your health and mental sanity and probably see your kids more often. Cherish it. Along with your lower risk for heart disease!
I also work in health care. I was tired of the commute and nothing was opening up where I could commute by transit (and transfer within the same health system), I left. I put A LOT of thought into it.
I had a lot of issues at the new place and wasn't liking the way things were going. About two or three months in, my old employer (and boss) contacted me to let me know something in their health system would be popping up nearby. So they poached me away. Not only was I finally off of nights (evenings, so I still get the differential), but it would be a better environment. At my previous jobs when I was nights, we were often pretty busy. At the job I regrettably moved to, it could be dead until the morning, which sucked.
Keep your eyes and ears open. Something might pop up. Did you ever consider evenings? For me, it was totally worth going off of nights. I still can be on a semi-regular schedule with most of the world. Sometimes things don't work out as planned. Some people LOVE sitting around and doing nothing all day a work, others don't. It takes time to figure out what kind of workflow is good for you. For example, I thrive in STAT environments, but other people HATE it.
thats better than going froma low stress to a high stress environment...i did that and thought i was going to get a heart attack one day, starting eating more junk food, exercising less, sleeping less
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