Interview last Thursday.
It was for the Admission/transfer/discharge nurse position that is being created at the hospital. Actually, there will be two full time and one half time admission nurse positions. The interview went well, despite happening after a hectic night. I think it likely that I will get this job, since it was my unit manager who urged me to apply for it, and she was one of the interviewers. : ) The admissions nurses will work 9am to 9:30 pm three days a week, plus every third weekend as a regular floor nurse (the critical care area for me) to keep our skills up. When we aren't admitting or discharging patients, we'll be tasking (helping other nurses with tasks, but not taking our own patients). These nursing positions are being created to help deal with the problem of the time consuming nature of an admission, which at best takes about 45 minutes of question answering and data entry, but more often takes close to an hour and a half. This is a problem when you have other people that need to be taken care of and given medications, etc. There is the intention that an admission nurse will be able to admit someone while they are waiting in the emergency department, and have all that data entry done when it's time to transfer the patient to the floor. I might be sent to any area of the hospital to admit someone, but first priority will be given to the critical care area, the med/surg area and to ortho/neuro, since they were the ones that donated the work hours to create these positions (budget neutral job creation, existing nurses being re-assigned to these new positions rather than being new-hires).
I should know for certain if I got the position in a week or so, but the way my interviewers talked, it kind of sounded like a given. : ) If it goes well, I may ask for the $5,000 "scholarship" that I didn't take when I first signed on. I didn't want to take the money then have to give it back again, because I wasn't confident that I would last the two years beyond orientation that you agree to work for it. I will add that money to the stimulus check from the government that I spent on my $32,000 education loan, plus another $3,000 I just sent in a couple of weeks ago (since I haven't use the money for moving expenses, I thought I could spend some of it for debt reduction). I may not be able to pay off my debt in 5 years, as I wished, but it should be less than ten years if I keep throwing any extra money at it.