Lyndsey's Travel Nursing Experiences: Working in LA

North and South towers

Adjusting to working at this hospital takes some time, I don't think I will ever feel totally comfortable there before I have to just leave again. It is a busy place, I like the experience I am getting, but I don't think I could work here full time. It is difficult to really get to know anyone. Everyone is so busy doing their own thing many times you don't see someone that has been there the whole day until it is time to go home! I have been lucky to have mainly all very nice patients. The patient culture here is different than anywhere else I have been. More people here that are older, married, and have money. Many times I am working with patients that are younger than I am, single, and on Medicaid. This hospital allows a lot of autonomy, which is nice, but at the same time makes you hope you are doing everything like they like it to be done. The orientation is so short, you get a small snip of what they like, and then set you free, its nearly impossible to do everything like they want it done. And every hospital double charts, but this unit is especially bad. They not only have some paper charting but they have two computer charting programs we have to use. And you can't have both programs open at once so you have to close one to chart in the other, a pain in the butt! I did receive an encouraging comment the other day though. We were talking about one of the new travel nurses (which we get at least 2-3 new ones every week!), we were worrying whether she would be able to handle working at a place like this. One of the nurses said to me, "yeah, you fit in well here, you gotta get in there and be ready to work fast." I never feel totally comfortable, hard to as a travel nurse. And many times I have no idea where things are, what doctors want, or what to do, but I try. So it was really nice to get that comment. Since I have started working there I have definitely had at least one delivery, sometimes 2. I have had some emergency situations with just my patients in only a few weeks. The c/s rate at this hospital is 40%, sometimes seems higher than that. I am working with residents again, so that is kind of nice to have again. Most the time these residents seem to really know what they are doing.

Full hospital view

For some reason, the City of Los Angeles requires nurses to have fire safetly class. It is the only county that has this requirement. So we had to go sit through this all day fire class with this guy that I very passionate about teaching this. He would be a good teacher for an elementary school fire safety class, a little over the top for us. But we did get to go to the roof of a parking garage and put out some fires. I would have to say, much more informative than the normal computer tests we take for fire safety. Those don't teach you as well how to use a fire extinguisher than actually using the fire extinguisher!

Enough about work! More about California. I have to admit, I haven't done too much exploring. A couple things keeping me from that. First, I am scared of the traffic. Not really scared, just trying to avoid it because I know it will put me in a bad mood. I will explore with other people, I just don't think I want to face the traffic alone, nor the gas prices! Also there is so much just right around me I don't have to go far. There are many little cafe's, restaurants, and shops. I mentioned the other night to some people that this is an area that you don't seem to see too many Mexican restaurants. If you think about it, almost anywhere you go there are tons of mexican restaurants. There are so many other types of restaurants here they don't need much mexican! The culture here is so diverse, it is cool. My patient population has ranged from African-American, to Caucasian, to Hispanic, to Asian, to Philippino, to people from Holland, Russia, England, and Germany. One patient was skyping her family oversees right after she had the baby. One day I was in the locker room at the gym changing and tiny girl from Russia I think was talking to this Asian lady about how long she has lived in LA, why she likes LA, etc. She said that she is fluent in 4 different languages! It was cool, she looked like she was 18. People around here don't seem to be as star struck as everyone else in the nation are. Whenever we have someone famous on the floor, nothing changes. You don't hear everyone talking about them or trying to see them. Things continue just the same.

The weekend of the Academy Awards I was driving back to the city from my brother's house. The exit I normally get off on was closed due to the awards, so I took the next exit then turned back and could see that I was about 2 blocks from the awards. I was in this backroad with parking spots available so I decided to park and walk up to see how close I could get. I got right up to the red carpet. I was on the corner of the sidewalk where they walk out on the red carpet and get in their cars to leave. It wasn't crazy crowded with people or hectic. It was kind of surreal. At first I couldn't get any good pics, there was this huge fence in front of us. But as I was leaving I noticed there were people standing on the newspaper racks, so I climbed up also! And I got some great pics!!