One resignation & two full-time offers later

It’s been an odd 7 days.

Last Thursday I received a phone call from a Gi (Gastroenterology) clinic in Denver that I had previously applied to.  They had a full-time RN position open up at their Denver location.  Full-time, great benefits, day shift, four days a week – 40 hours, no weekends.  Stability! Like, real stability.  Like, full-time schedule day job without weekends or holidays stability.  Something many nurses only dream of. It’s not often you’re able to get a clinic job as a newer nurse.

I interviewed with them on Friday.  It seemed like a dream.  No Weekends?  Pre-op, Intra-op & Recovery? Hour lunches?  They said they were like a family and were looking for the perfect addition to their small team. The girls who interviewed me couldn’t have been more than 5 years older than me.  They were so nice.  I told them about my summer experience in the PACU in Casper and how much I LOVED working with such awesome women.  (Thanks Pacu Ladies!) I told them how my dream immediately out of nursing school was to go into recovery room nursing but how that was nearly impossible as a new nurse and how working in recovery – even if it’s light recovery – would be incredible.

After the interview, which I thought went well but I really did think the job was out of my reach, the eating disorder facility called and offered me the job.  I was so thrilled that I accepted the verbal offer on the spot.  As I said in my other post – eating recovery is also something I’ve wanted to do since before nursing school.

So then one of my references told me the Gi facility had called them at 5pm on Friday for a reference.  After a 20 minute discussion where they asked all sorts of questions (what type of family does she have? was she a good student? is she a team player?), my reference got the feeling that they wanted to know about me as a whole person – not just about me as a nurse.  I liked that.

Today the Gi facility called and offered me the job.  I told them I needed some time to think about it but that I’d let them know before the end of the day.  And then I spent the rest of the morning and afternoon racking my brain, talking to my family and Andrew and best friend Kristine & praying for guidance.

I came to this conclusion:  There are always going to be areas of nursing I’m interested in or think I’m interested in.  I thought I was interested in being an OB nurse until I completed my full clinical rotation in OB and realized that nope, OB nursing is not for me.  I thought I wanted to be a pediatric nurse until I took care of screaming children post-op and met parents who offer zero comfort to their crying child and make you want to puke.  I didn’t know anything about being a recovery room nurse until I spent last summer in the recovery room and loved my “job” – even if I was a student.  I had a great team, I learned A TON and I legit missed working in recovery when I started working in med/surg at my current facility.  I didn’t dread going into “work” each day.  It became routine and I looked forward to more opportunities to learn and grow.

Just because I think I want to be an eating disorder nurse doesn’t mean I will love it.  I know I love recovery nursing.  So when the Gi ladies told me my job would consist of pre-operative nursing, intra-operative nursing (helping the docs with procedures) and recovery – no matter how light the recovery process is due to the type of Gi procedures that require lighter sedation – I told them I could see myself being an excellent addition and I told them the truth: Med-Surg might be a wonderful stepping stone, but I don’t love it.  And I loved the recovery room.  And if this job allows me to be a recovery nurse, then I’m all in.

After going back and forth and back and forth, I accepted the Gi job.  Eating disorder nursing is something I’ve always been interested in and could potentially love but I couldn’t pass up an opportunity to work in an area that I already know I love.  Plus the job benefits far outweigh the eating disorder job – day shift, four days a week, no weekends, no holidays.  And finally: I have spent years praying for a job that doesn’t require me to work weekends because I want to be more involved in my church.  I absolutely love Flatirons Church and it’s part of the reason I decided to move out of Denver and closer to Lafayette – so I could actually make it every Sunday and so I can get involved.  I don’t want to just be a Sunday church go-er.  With that being said, how wrong would that be for me to say Thanks for the opportunity God but I’m going to skip out and take a job that will only allow me to go to church every other week.  Maybe next time! Pretty wrong.  I’ve been blessed.

My next step is now to call the eating disorder facility and retract my acceptance.  Which I know isn’t going to be too horrible because they haven’t even sent me my official job offer – everything was verbal and nothing is set in stone – yet. But it’s still going to be hard – I really connected with the CNO (chief nursing officer) who interviewed me – mainly because she is on the board at UW, my alma mater.

Alas – more change.  Like I said, these past 7 days have been odd.  Very, very odd.  But I’ve been blessed.

Like my dad said, just a few weeks ago I was going on and on about never finding a full-time job and my mom was worried I wasn’t happy and I was worried about not having stability with my weird hours and life was just stress, stress, stress.  It’s funny how things work out.  I am blessed.