Thank goodness today was the last Friday I have to work for awhile! My doc took almost every Friday off all summer long (which was nice because our normal day off is Thursday - which makes for a nice long weekend PLUS I have Tuesdays off to stay home with Bean, so my weeks were very short) and it's been 5 weeks of working Fridays. This is because we had a medical student, J, from OHSU shadowing Dr D. He was the quiet-but-eager type and he even shadowed me to learn a thing or two (I think I screwed him up for life!). It was kind of neat thinking I was teaching a future DOCTOR how to do an electrocardiogram!
I was joking with Dr D at how hard working 3 days a week is for me (Ha!) and he confided that he's seriously thinking about cutting his hours back at the beginning of the year - he's wanting to permanently take Fridays off. That would mean that I could a) still work 3 days a week, but work M,T,W or b) I could insist on keeping my Tuesdays off and only work 2 days a week. I'm stuck. I have *THE* perfect job for where my life is right now. At the hospital you have to work crappy shifts (ie: 11pm-7am), every other weekend, every other holiday, getting time off is like pulling teeth. At my job I can get just about all the time I want off at any time, NO weekends, NO evenings, EVERY holiday off plus some. But I do miss the ER type things that would go down at the hospital and my "RN" skills aren't utilized as much as they would be in the hospital setting. But hey! That's the beauty of being an RN! I can do this for 10 more years if I wanted, then go work in the ER for 3 years ... then turn around and work in the OR. I can even look into being a school nurse when Maysen goes to school. The book is just cracked for me! So I am still waiting to see where my nursing career takes me! But for now, I'm very pleased with the path that it has taken for my slow and paced life right now.
2 comments:
I struggle between wanting to advance and knowing that now is not the time. My position is not going anywhere but I know when I am done having kids and they are older then I can advance. Luckily I can do a lot of training for higher positons now and so moving up in 5-10 years will be easy. I know I only have a little time when my kids will be young. I will have lots of time to go back to being career minded. Of course knowing that doesn't make me any happier when someone I train gets a promotion (that I didn't apply for). You are lucky to have such a great position right now. I have so many Nurse friends who end up working more hours than they want and on holidays. Of course they do may 3 times what I do ;-)
The good thing is you can always advance, like you said. Once your kiddos are bigger and doing their own thing and you have time for yourself again, you can look into it. I've always wanted to be an ER nurse - and so far I haven't gotten the opportunity to do that. But I know one day I will. I just need to rememeber that I'm still in my prime and the workforce will wait :) Hang in there, EJ. You'll know when the time is right!
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