‘A great team culture’ where you ‘make a difference’
“You will never go home feeling that you didn’t make a difference,” says Charlene Gozony. She's the Medical-Surgical Telemetry (called Med-Surg/Tele, for short) Nurse Manager at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Community Hospital (MLKCH).
Read more in the following interview.
What kind of experience is required to join the MLKCH Med-Surg/Tele unit as a float nurse?
Unlike most float departments, you do not have to have several years of experience in a broad range of specialties. MLKCH’s Med-Surg/Tele pool is very specifically about caring for overflow Med-Surg/Tele patients, so all you need is two years of experience to join the department. In fact, we are looking for nurses who are looking for new experiences and challenges in their careers. It’s a great place to build experience.
What’s a typical day like working in the MLKCH Med-Surg/Tele float pool?
It’s diverse! On any given day you could be in our busy Emergency Department assisting the Emergency Department nurse to take over a Med-Surg/Tele patient and making sure their first few hours as an inpatient is a comfortable experience. Or you could start in our innovative Intensive Care Unit caring for a Med-Surg/Tele patient. Our float pool nurses are an integral part of our nursing core and are appreciated by all units when they come to the rescue and help out when a unit is short-staffed.
And it’s rewarding--every day that you work at MLKCH is a day that you make someone’s life better. Our hospital serves a community that was medically neglected for years and our patients are extremely grateful and appreciative of our staff. What you do matters in the biggest sense at MLKCH and you will never go home feeling that you didn’t make a difference.
What do you love about working at MLKCH?
The MLKCH culture is truly a dynamic one. We care about innovation, so we foster a culture of learning here that encourages all staff to gain new skills, education, and experiences. For example, we have a very generous tuition reimbursement which has helped many nurses accomplish their goals in completing their baccalaureate and master’s degrees. Another exciting thing we do is to encourage nurses to participate in committees to develop new processes and new patient care initiatives. When nurses participate in the development of new initiatives it gives them a creative edge that helps them to grow individually and professionally.
There is just a great team culture at MLKCH. We celebrate our nurses in many ways throughout the year, having fun with beach outings, luncheons, and many other creative ways. The hospital’s leadership is very supportive and celebrates staff accomplishments regularly. So we have fun here, but we are very serious about our core mission to provide the highest quality healthcare to our patients, and to do it in a compassionate way.