Ever since Baby Ben was born I’ve only worked about 4 shifts of actual nursing. That’s a little more than half a shift per month.

That’s not what I had planned on. I was hoping to work part-time after Ben was born, but two weeks after he was born, along came NursingLink and offered me the Job of a Lifetime. Three months later I realized that it was not the right opportunity for that particular moment in my life and so I quit. I continued to pick up shifts in the MICU but realized that (a) I need more shifts than they can offer and (b) I need more money. So I signed up for GHOAT’s internal agency. I thought this would be the answer to all of my financial problems and so far it has proved financially fruitful. The problem is that I’ve found myself in Nurse Limbo.

What is Nurse Limbo? Well here is the description of the job that I originally answered:

“The Outpatient Building is looking for 2 ACLS nurses to be on their Emergency Response team, Monday – Friday from 4pm-8pm. Start date: 9/17, end date is 12/31/07”

Doesn’t sounds kind of exciting, right? “ACLS,” “emergency response team” and the hours are such that I could receive ICU pay without having to hire a babysitter. AND it has a start date and an end date, so if it wasn’t quite what I was looking for, I could move on after it was over.

Well it’s not what I thought it would be, not at all. Here’ s the problem: The team must have a doc on it and they can’t seem to find an MD who would be willing to do it. So in the meantime the nurse administrator has recruited me to work on some projects for her, for the same hours and the same pay.

The first week wasn’t to bad. I had to compile some data and produce some charts in Excel, illustrating how far we had come in reaching some of the National Patient Safety Goals

Excel is not my strong suit but I’ve always been interested in the visual presentation of information and so I didn’t mind this task (okay that’s kind of a stretch – this job kind of has the Purina Cat Chow factor but hey, it’s temporary, right?)

The next week I was asked to go to some of the departments and ask them for completed surveys. Again not too bad. I don’t mind walking around the hospital. I don’t mind meeting new people. I don’t even mind getting yelled out by people (“What? She wants us to fill out more surveys?”) I don’t mind because I feel their pain. It wasn’t too long ago that I was working as a clinician and would curse anyone that came by asking me to fill out a survey.

But now it’s week three and I’ve been sitting in front of spreadsheets and graphs all week and I’m not sure how much more of this I can take. I could always go back to the agency and ask for a new assignment. The problem is that I don’t have any flexibility with respect to childcare. And I think the key to making money in per diem agency nursing is to have that flexibility.

I think the next step here might be going back to working on a unit part-time, even if it means taking a pay cut. I was hoping to avoid this at least until Christmas (I will not work on Ben’s first Christmas!) but this may come sooner rather than later.

The ironic thing? Every single day I get emails requesting per diem nurses for the SICU, but the SICU nurse manager refuses to take me because I only have MICU experience. Her loss, I guess. I’ve had post-surgical patients in the MICU (lung reductions, ex laps, etc.) and I know what to do with a freakin’ JP drain. Not to mention the fact that we take care of patients with non-surgical wounds all the time (can you say Stage 4 pressure ulcers?) and I can rock a dressing change like nobody’s business.

At any rate, I predict a change in my situation sooner rather than later. I miss being a clinician.