After finishing in Virginia, I thought about where I wanted to go next. Unfortunately, winter was back already and I knew I needed to hibernate in my own way. This meant it was time for me to return to Florida.
Florida is a tough market for locum tenens because there is a saturation of nurse practitioners. I have been lucky to find an assignment in Florida for the past 2 winters though.
I originally had 2 options in Florida. The first option was in Port St. Lucie, FL, 2 hours north of Miami. I thought that was convenient because I could easily go home for the weekend whenever I felt like it. The site was a clinic I had worked at previously, so I knew what to expect. That was definitely a plus.
My second option was in Tallahassee, Florida. This is in Northern Florida and where I went for my BSN (Florida State University). My brother currently lives in Tallahassee, so I was interested in going back there to spend time with him – along with some of my previous professors/mentors and friends. TI would be covering a maternity leave for 3 months. The physician in charge was pretty friendly and the patient per day ratio was fair (14-16 per day).
Am I the only person that really hates making decisions? Especially when my options are both equally as good.
When I thought things through, I wondered realistically how often I would actually go down to Miami if I lived in Port St. Lucie. A 2-hour drive could easily turn into 3-4hours during rush hour. Which is realistically when I would head down; right after work.
The Tallahassee position was initially paying $5/hour more than the Port St. Lucie job. I didn’t think that was a deal breaker, because after 12 weeks that only ends up being an extra ~$2000. Yet, once I mentioned I had another offer, the Tallahassee job increased their offer. So now they were offering me an extra $10/hour more than the Port St. Lucie job. After 3 months that’s an extra ~$5000.
Are you wondering which position I ended up choosing? I’ll explain which job I choose and the main reason I selected them in my next post.
