I'm not in Ottawa anymore...

Well then, it's confirmed - I'm not in Ottawa. I was chatting with Jackie, our nurse educator, yesterday about phone numbers. They have recently been told to dial in the area code because the big phone people might be introducing a new area code; I figured, oh yeah, like in Ottawa, makes sense. What I found out today - she didn't mean the city or region, she meant the province ! Yep, I leant that you only recently have to use an area code for the ENTIRE province. So you could be calling hours away, long distance charges and all, and no area code needed! Maybe I'm just an idiot, or completely naive as to stats for Saskatchewan, but apparently their population is just above 1 million, so quite similar to Ottawa. The region though, slightly bigger.

Another tell-tale of a smaller town - I spent my morning break listening to a conversation about how many chickens Jackie was buying, and how many pickling jars she could get. I then spent my lunch break talking about buying "a quarter" land which is apparently 160 acres for 50 0000-220 000 $ depending on the quality of farm land. This girl was attempting to buy a piece of land next to hers, 160 acres, 120 000 $. That's nuts!

I found out yesterday that the nursing salary scale is a full 10$ more an hour then in Ontario. That's 20% more then ours! Their top salary scale is more then what I'm making as a contract nurse. And yet because of the money they also give my agency, we're the last people they call in for overtime. So that's not happening. What am I going to do with my 6 days off alone next week!

I don't want to talk too much about the job itself, that's not very interesting. I got 2 shifts of training, including a total of 7 hours of shadowing, and my next shift Monday - I'm on my own! Sure, that makes sense... Lol. Apparently that's more training then most agency nurses get. There's even nurses that have worked there for a year, and are just starting to work in their OBS sections with monitors, and we as more experienced nurses will be mostly scheduled there. That's not stressful at all. The saddest part is there aren't any orderlies! The puke, the pee, the poop, all me. The glasses of water, blankets, repositioning, all me. I even have to wheel my own admitted patients up to the floors on nights... No porter. It's all very interesting. I asked what their wait times were, and she said they were shameful - about 30 minutes to 2 hours. I almost died laughing.

The population / clientele is already proving to be quite different. Different people, different struggles. I really don't know how much detail I can give on the clientele, so obvious confidentiality issues, so this is definitely not something I'll be bringing too often. As a general look, seems like overdoses, suicide attempts, and sexual assault will all be a new challenge to my nursing skills.

Well, I'm sure there's plenty other differences, so I'll keep you all posted!
For now, we've been very good with our groceries, cooking, lunch packing, coffee making in the morning... This apartment is really well set up, everything we need, down to the heat lamp above the shower. Plan tomorrow - Saskatoon with our fellow co-worker / agency nurse and her partner. More explorations!Read more