Job Update

Well, things have FINALLY started to pick up on the job front. Let me backtrack a little.

About the end of January, I heard from the recruiter at Baylor and found out that the hospital I interviewed with just before Christmas was wanting to make an offer, but the CNO was sick, so it would be a little while before I would hear officially. In the meantime, things were progressing with the conversations I was having with the COO and CNO at my hospital here. I met with my CNO about 2 weeks ago. She started our conversation with "I'm sure you know this, but we don't have a position in the budget for this year." Well, then why are you even meeting with me, woman??? Anyway, she had some good ideas, and it looks like one of our Cardiovascular surgeons was looking to move a big part of his Thoracic (chest) surgeries to our hospital, so I gave her my ideas on how a CNS would be perfect for something like that. She liked my ideas and told me that they would definitely use me and would pay me for my time. So basically, it sounded like she was wanting me to do policy revision and implement new protocols and teach our nurses, but all this in addition to the 36 hours a week I already work, and for the same pay rate. Yeah. Right.

Also, the Heart Failure/Transplant clinic that I interviewed with right after Graduation (and subsequently hired one of my classmates) had a new opening. I emailed their director with my resume and now for the past week or so, she's been on me about applying formally through their website. Why does she want to hire me so bad now when she didn't want to hire me 7 months ago?? I've heard that the clinic is going through a lot of changes and I know they got a new Medical Director last summer, so I'm not really sure what is going on.

Then, my friend Tracie, who works for the Cardiovascular Surgeons at one of our Partnership hospitals, tells me that the group she works for might also be looking for someone to do the same at another hospital in town. I sent her my resume in like November and she forwarded it on. I never heard anything. Well, last week, she sends me a text and says that it might work out after all! I resent my resume, but I haven't heard anything yet.

Well, last week I got the offer from Baylor Medical Center Waxahachie. It was not quite what I wanted, but more than I thought they'd offer since they're such a small hospital. I counter offered and am waiting to hear back. So I guess we're in negotiations. We'll see what happens! This hospital is small, only 69 beds. They've recently bought 80something acres on the highway to build a new hospital, so I'd get to be in the planning stages of that. It will be 250 beds when all is said and done. They are creating a new position, which is exciting. They need someone to do patient/family education on Heart Failure and Pneumonia, as well as community education at the local nursing homes. They also need a staff educator as well. They want to go for Magnet status, so I'd help with that. At first the position was only part time, but she offered a full time position, 24 hours doing the CNS stuff I just mentioned, and 12 hours doing either Quality Control and/or working for the Hospitalist. I'm excited about the possibility of working with a hospitalist; it will give me the direct patient care and prescriptive opportunities that I need.

Marc and I have talked A LOT about the possibilities of moving and how we'd do it, but it's not nearly as scary as it was last summer when I took that interview in Irving. I even mentioned in a previous post that we had talked so much about it that now the possibility of staying in Austin was weird. Fortunately we had a lot of time in the car last week to talk about things, so I think we're ok with moving if we have to. People move for their jobs all the time. Heck, my parents moved from New Jersey to Oklahoma City for my Dad's job when they had been married for like 10 years and already had 2 kids. It will definitely be sad to leave our friends here, but we're keeping our UT season tickets, so we'll be down quite a bit during football season!!

So we'll see where the next few days takes us!