Registered Nurses
 

Are there any RNs still working from the Villages. If so , what area, hospital etc and are there clubs for similar Nursing interests?

Re: Registered Nurses
 

Yes there are still nurses that live in the Villages that work many at the Villages Hospital. As for clubs there is a Nursing club in the villages look in the recreation paper that comes out weekly. I think you will find it in there.

Re: Registered Nurses
 

:)Hi,
I am an Rn and would love to know more about the Nurses club. I haven't seen anything about it in the paper for some time. I worked at the Villages Regional Hospital for 1 1/2 years and just recently resigned. I was quite disappointed in the direction it seems to be going in since Leesburg Regional took over the Hospital.
To make a long story short the nurses don't have a lot of time to take care of the patient's and that's just getting worse. I have been an actively employed RN for 37 years with an excellent record and couldn't stay where I felt my license could be compromised. Good Patient care is just too important to me.
I was also getting tired of people telling me about the awful time they had as a patient or visitor at TVRH.... this happened a lot just as soon it became known I am an RN and worked at the hospital. It got to the point that I didn't tell anyone what I did professionally unless I was asked. Despite anything the hospital PR team tells you there are a lot of unhappy nurses at The Villages Hospital. Many have to work and so they stay. The opportunities in Florida for nurses are very limited. Nurses coming from other parts of the country are shocked by the limited opportunities and awful salaries. I am fortunate that I don't have to work.
I am going to work in Home Health next which is something I did while I lived in California and loved it. I'm 60 and I am not ready to retire yet. I do like participating in the care of people and helping them to better their lives.

Re: Registered Nurses
 

I think that everyone complains about the local hospitals. i have workded at a few over the years and people just prefer to go where they are not known.

I am an OB nurse but have worked all kinds of areas in the last 33 years. Where do people go to have their babies in your area. Yes I do realize this is a 55 community!

Re: Registered Nurses
 

OB...in TV that is usually a vet's office LOL. Leesburg has an OB department and I'm pretty sure that Ocala and Waterman have one too but I'm not 100% on that.

For people looking at TV please remember that there are folks that would be unhappy anywhere and with anything. Their life isn't perfect but if "it" was they would be happy.

I'm an RN at TVRH. Is it perfect....no. Does the management try to accommodate needs of the nurses, in my opinion yes. Right now we are going through major expansion and from day to day we don't know which elevator works and where we are going to find things. Does that reflect on the care patients receive or the attitude of management? I don't believe so, it is just in interruption in the flow. The only complaints that I hear is nurses being called out (me included)......due to lack of snow birds there is a shortage of patients but that will change.

Tvrh
 

Is it getting any better for the Nurses who work there?

I hope we get some response other than the typical 'TVRH emergency rooms sucks!" stories. I'd like to keep this thread open to those that have 'working' knowledge (yourself or spouse) of TVRH and other facilities in the area where RN's work. What is a typical salary? What is the patient ratio? Is the technology current? etc. God willing I'll be in the RN job market in TV before too long.

Russ

Thanks for asking these questions Russ. I will be arriving in TV on the 1st, will be looking for a RN position and hope to start back to work in January.

I just returned to nursing 4 years ago after raising my family and although the conditions have certainly changed for the worse and in spite of critical attitudes I have experienced in patients who think they are staying at the Hilton, I love nursing! IMHO, the good outweighs the bad. (on most days)

I am concerned about the RN/patient ratios. I interviewed during a visit in January and was told it was 5-6 on a med-surg floor, which leads me to believe it will actually be higher than that, and to me that is unacceptable and no wonder we are hearing much criticism about the hospital.

The trend in hospitals these days puts more emphasis on plasma TV's than having a nurse available to answer a patient's call for help! Because of that I am hoping to find something else and the ability to do that is one of the great things about nursing. I would love to be able to drive my golf cart to work, but will drive further away if a better position is available. I plan on working 2 days a week and don't mind driving at all!

I too, would love to hear more from RN's already there.....good and bad!

Thanks Russ and by the way, getting your license transferred to Florida is a bit involved and I hired a company to get me through the process...$125.00 well spent IMO.

Karen

Thanks for the advice Karen. I also interviewed at TVRH in April. I was also told the ratio was 5-6 and the pay rate was around $25 an hour to start. I'll be taking my RN boards next year (assuming I graduate in April!). Being inexperienced I'll probably have to cut my teeth in a hospital setting here in Boston, probably in ER, but after some experience I'll be open to other alternatives. I'm sure the TV area has other RN options beside the two hospitals.

:agree:I SO agree Russ. This is an excellent information passing thread so far. I hope it stays that way. Many thanks from us very grateful patients to those of you who have to put up with so much these days.

OMG! Did I type this? I was complaining to a Doc today that our hospital is spending $$$ to upgrade all the TVs in the hospital to flat screens, but that it takes a act of congress to get basic supplies approved by a financial committee. What a joke the health care industry has become. Okay climbing off my soapbox now...

Thanks for this thread, I'm a RN who will hopefully be moving down to TV within the next few years. I used to live in FL, and luckily have kept my FL License current. I work in a GI Lab now, better environment than Med/Surg---have no desire to return to that part of my life. Good rule of thumb has always been for me if they tell me 6:1 ratio in a interview, add at least 1 to whatever they tell you. I am sure ya'll find that true also in your experience.

Good thing about Nursing is that no matter where we move to, we can find a job. What kind of job that is, well that is always a mystery! Good luck to all the RNs moving down, wishing you all your dream jobs. :)

Karen83, oh my, do I ever take umbrage at your remark....


"I just returned to nursing 4 years ago after raising my family and although the conditions have certainly changed for the worse and in spite of critical attitudes I have experienced in patients who think they are staying at the Hilton, I love nursing! IMHO, the good outweighs the bad. (on most days)"
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
You bet they're staying at the Hilton, better yet, they're staying in a Penthouse in Manhattan, $$$$. I think you are blaming the sad state of medical care in the USA on the patient. Patients are not admitted for hangnails these days, (unless there is a staph or MRSA infection involved), and are only admitted if they are truly ill or a surgical patient. (OB case's excluded). The understaffing situation in hospitals currently is ludicrous and patients are putting their lives on the line in some care situations. I have 5 different medical situations that I could relate illustrating the sorry state of care. My emphasis is NOT on the nursing staff but the lack of adequate nursing staff and aides in the hospital settings. Resources spred way too thin is a huge problem and I have no idea how it will be resolved. BTW, there are 6 RN's in my family and they are the best! But additional staffing is required to cover those shifts. And I will give you, there may be a few demanding patients but some of those become demanding when call bells aren't answered, pain is unrelieved at the appropriate time and so forth. And all that diminished attention for a small fortune. Maybe the CEO's need less income and public companies making their money off the ill could do with a little less and proportional staff to patient numbers could be maintained.

Peachie, I understand your frustration. I've had family members in the hospital too, it ain't a picnic. Not only it ain't a picnic, it's downright scary. I would never leave a family member of mine alone in a hospital.

But I also TOTALLY see where Karen83 is coming from, and I am sure she didn't mean any harm by what she said. I think she was referring to is how hospitals are driven by a unspoken voice that says forget staffing! We want Plasma's in the rooms. Forget patient safety! We want 5 star dining by phone available in the rooms. That is where budgets are made these days, each hospital trying to "out-hotel" each other. As a nurse, you don't know whether to scream or cry, or just leave the profession.

I personally knew a RN that left the hospital setting after she was punished by not delivering a hot cup of coffee within so many minutes---what was she doing? Administering life saving measures to a patient in distress. I don't blame her. We are RNs, not waitresses. Sure, I love to pamper my patients, calm their fears, sit and chat with them. That's the good stuff, but I still have a job to do. And more and more I am doing the work of 3 people. People wonder why people are leaving the Nursing profession in record numbers....well for starters, I know I have been punched, kicked, spit on, puked on, threatened with my life, hair pulled, scratched. We can handle that, but to be confronted with a administration that values hardwood floors, room service, plasma's rather than adequate safe staffing ratio's--well that is almost more than you can bear. It's because I know patients are at risk with these decisions.

Okay, off my soap box once again. Peachie, it sounds like you had a horrible experience in a hospital--I hope you went to administration and voiced your concerns about the staffing situation. I truly am sorry you had to experience the reality of where hospitals are going.

Peachie, I think you and I are on the same page! I totally agree with everything you said, but at least where I worked for the last 4 years, a med/surg telemetry floor, we had more than our fair share of patients who were demanding, to say the least. Add to that the bad staffing and morale could get very low which creates a vicious cycle.

Our hospital definitely seems to put the emphases and money on making the rooms pretty when IMO, everyone would benefit with better staffing. The administrators need to get on the floor, get their hands dirty and see for themselves what it's like in the trenches.

As I said, the good for me outweighed the bad, which is why I want to continue working after our move to TV, preferably at TVRH. Returning to nursing after many years has been an extremely rewarding experience in spite of some of the problems I have encountered. But, I won't work with a 5-6 pt. ratio and will try to find something else.

I could get started on how insurance has created much of the problems in medicine, but think this is not the place for it.

Once again, I think you and I agree on more than you think...maybe I didn't make my thoughts clear in my first post.

A fellow RN, Karen

Rozzie,

We were posting at the same time!

Thanks for putting my thoughts into words better than I could do for myself!
You absolutely nailed it!!

Karen

Karen83 and Rozzie, as I stated, I had an issue with the idea that patients are demanding. I was sitting with my Mom in ICU where my Dad had been admitted as a stroke patient. We were talking quietly on the left side of the bed and the nurse was hanging a warfarin drip. The RN left the room and in two minutes the alarm on the stand went off and she came running back in. She stared at the bag in shock and asked us, "WHAT DID YOU DO?" We told her we hadn't been out of our chairs and she ran from the room. You should have seen the staff in the room at that point! We were asked to step out of the room and after a 15 minute pause where told the seriousness of the error. My 86 year old mother had knee replacement surgery in April and the hospital staff left the CPM (?) machine on her leg for almost three hours before they realized the error. She did not ring the call button often and the physical RN or Aide response took between 10 and 15 minutes. Pain ratchets up pretty fast in 15 minutes when the dose was due 30 minutes earlier. And patients who are ill and in pain are not always kind and sweet, they tend to be cranky and demanding even though that isn't their normal personality.

I'm sure you are an excellent nurse, Karen, and I applaud your dedication to your calling. But most hospitalized people need a lot of care and attention, that's why they're inpatient. Heaven knows they're kicked out the door as soon as they are able to ambulate and defecate. Bring in the staff to operate these facilities and the complaints will drop accordingly and nurses may recover their sanity after all the stress.

Peachie,

I totally understand your frustration and am right there with you....there is plenty of frustration on both sides of medicine. Like Rozzie, I would never leave a loved one alone in the hospital and that is a sad statement coming from nurses. I am sorry you've had those bad experiences and won't try to make excuses for them.

Bottom line......we need better staffing. But, that takes money, which begs the question.......where are all of our health care dollars going?? Hint....check out the salaries of the insurance CEO's.

Now, I'm done and will get packing for our move. Like Rozzie, I'm putting my soapbox away.

Karen

Welcome to The Villages, Karen, and you're right! My frustration is totally with the current administration of medical/hospital services in this nation, it is not with the dedicated staff doing so much with so little help. Safe trip! :welcome:

Peachie & Karen.... I do so empathize with your frustrations re the medical profession and what's happening with the "top-heavy" powers-that-be robbing the profession blind.

As a patient with a terminal illness and living in TV, I found it imperative that I return to my medical providers here in Boston where I'd been treated for two years and treated as a person and not a number or dollar sign.

In Florida:

One dr said to me to just go home and wait it out and then go to hospice. Wow, I left her office feeling that I had been given a death sentence!!

Another dr told me if I didn't take his injection after chemo that he would not be responsible for my death!

My gp there had totally forgotten that I had a blood clot in my left lung. Told me, why didn't I tell her. I DID TELL HER....she forgot. Then immeidately sent me to a specialist almost a year AFTER my first appt with her.

Then, having spent three days in LRMC, (what a nightmare) I was totally disgusted with the dr's indifference to one's condition.

Upon returning to the Boston medics, I find these highly-professional providers to be pro-active in their profession. What a difference.

Nurses...."angels of mercy" I have much respect for their dedication and empathy for their frustations.

The problem is so obviously poor administration without regard for the well-being of humans, however, the resolution .....who knows???? As in every other scenario, the rich get richer, and richer, and richer....

Barb, all I can say is "wow". Stories like yours makes me pause and think--it is a really sad state of health care. I can't imagine the road you have been dealt. I see the apathetic attitude everyday, and it sickens me. Wishing you the very best, and smoother roads ahead for you.

Barb, thank goodness for your tenacity! I pray you continue to receive the attentive care you deserve. That is an eye-opening experience I hope never to hear repeated.

In medically treating the very elderly, I believe a patient advocate, whether family or friend, is absolutely necessary. If we could turn the patient care levels back to the sixties, sigh....

My wife has been a practicing RDH, Registered Dental Hygienist, in California for over 30 years and is licensed for just about all expanded RDH duties including xray, injections, lazer usage, etc.

She wants to practice in Fla when we snowbird in the winter but the Fla Dental Board requires transfers retake the National Board exam which she took 30 years ago to get her license. She said it would require going back and taking the college hygienist training all over again, NOT!

In comparison, paying $125 for an RN license transfer seems like a very small price.


.

Chuck,

I was greatly relieved to find out I wouldn't have to re-take my boards....that would have been a deal breaker for me too!

Like I said, I consider $125 spent to guide me through the transferring process more than worth it!

Karen

Villages Hospital
 

I am an RN and have had 2 surgeries at The Villages hospital this year. I had wonderful care. The first time I was hospitalized 3 days and the second time 5 days. Nurses were wonderful. Doctors were top notch. Food was their weak link--imho

That's good praise indeed since we know that nurses make the worst patients:laugh:

As a patient I can live without great food, tough to get through a hospitalization without great care!

Karen,

You hit the nail on the head about the salaries of the insurane companies' CEO. It is down-right wrong what they get paid at the expense of healthcare.

As far as hospital budgets go, the department heads do pretty well with bonuses for keeping under budget by cutting staffing and services.
Also, hospital management feel "pretty" gives the impression they give better service.

Although not a nurse (but my son is) as a respiratory therapist I can relate to trying to give good patient care in todays healthcare system. It is not an easy task.

Hospital Nursing
 

Thanks for the info. I too love Nursing.:a040:

Nurses organization
 

THERE IS A VERY LARGE ORGANIZATION HERE IN THE VILLAGES AND THEY ARE VERY ACTIVE .....THEY HAVE GUEST LECTURERS ONCE A MONTH....


fumar

RN Jobs
 

I've been an RN in the Washington/Metropolitan area for 25 years. My husband and I are very interesting in moving to TV in the next couple of years once the kids are in college. What type of opportunities are there in TVRH and what are the salaries in TV area. Very interested in working part time when I arrive. Martha

The State of Nursing
 

Hello fellow RN's, almost RN's (Russ), friends of all RN's, RT's, Dental Hygienists, etc:

Wow, some amazing thoughts, comments, and stories. I became an RN after raising my kids (was a stay-home mom for 14 yrs. and worked P/T in some capacity in a hospital during most of that time). As an RN, I started in psych for l.5 yrs., then tried med-surg-telemetry for 14 months. I left an hour later than everybody else, mostly b/c I tended to the needs of my patient's - THEN, did my charting on a horribly outdated computer program. I'd crawl up the steps to be greeted by a husband and 3 kids saying, "Hi Mom, what's for dinner?" I'd just fall down somewhere and say, "How 'bout milk and cereal, pb & j, pizza from Dominoes?" Then I'd complain to my husband till I hated hearing my own complaints. (Med-surg nurses should be paid triple what they make, honestly). Well, you guessed it; I QUIT! Went out job hunting with my $200 resume and wound up working psych in a prison! Got the job through a friend, networking (so much for the expensive resume). I LOVE IT!

When I move to TV in April, I will be taking a huge cut in pay and I'm not sure where I will work. One thing I do know, it is imperative that you work in a setting you love. Otherwise, it makes for a very unhappy nurse, and that trickles down to the patients. Luckily, (I'd like to believe) - my patients didn't suffer. My husband and kids - well that's another story for another day. God Bless the health care workers!

A agree with JerseyGirl that you have to love what you are doing in nursing. I have been an RN for 30 years (at the same hospital) and have been fortunate enough to always have jobs I enjoyed. I worked float pool, ER, house-wide supervision and staff education, academic education and currently, simulation education. Each job had its challenges and rewards but I have always enjoyed what I did- otherwise I wouldn't have stayed in it (certainly it is not the salaries that nurses make!). My work also led to a secondary career in writing two textbooks which has also been rewarding. One of the nice thing about nursing is that if you dislike one job there are many others out there to choose from.

"If you don't enjoy the journey, it's not worth taking"