Pre-Nursing Training
When someone asks about my first job, I say I was an Official Baseball Scorekeeper. Scorekeeping was the first job where I received pay for something I did, hours to keep, and specific job expectations. I attended all my brother’s ball games and agreed when asked if I would become the Official Baseball Scorekeeper. After all, Parks and Rec paid me three dollars a game, which was a lot of money in 1970.
My next job was at Rocky Mount Memorial Hospital, where I worked as a Volunteer Candy Striper four hours a day, three days a week. I loved it because I dreamed of becoming a nurse and working there gave me an inside look into my future. I even loved working in the kitchen, although dumping food stank.
Periodically, I received pay from neighbors for Babysitting or being a Companion to women for a week or longer while their husbands were away in the hospital or on business trips. The companion jobs just involved talking and watching TV so they would not feel alone, but I can understand why they wanted someone with them. We lived in very rural surroundings, and back then, many homes didn’t have telephones (note: cell phones were not invented yet.) Almost everything I did (except baseball) was service-oriented with “caring” associated.
During my last year of high school, I worked part-time as a Waitress at Bonanza Restaurant. I usually worked the evening-to-close shift. I had a lot of fun with those who worked that shift, my best friend and her boyfriend. The pay wasn’t great, but the memories were.
Nursing School Jobs
The following fall, nursing school started, and so did my new life. As I finished each clinical rotation, I could work in that clinical area as a Nurse’s Aide in my freshman year and as a Nursing Assistant in my junior year. We were allowed to work any shift and as many as we wanted to work, provided it did not interfere with our class work. I mainly worked weekends, but some of the students who were planning weddings worked almost full-time. I gained much experience working at Roanoke Memorial as a Nurse’s Aide. I learned first-hand what the job was all about and how to work as a team member with others. Later, when I graduated, I was prepared for what I faced as a nurse (well, almost.)
First Nursing Job
When I finished nursing school at Roanoke Memorial, I worked in the Emergency Department, night shift, at Rocky Mount, where I once was a Candy Striper. I worked as a Graduate Nurse waiting to take boards under the supervision of a licensed nurse. I loved being a nurse and could hardly wait for my license, though the idea of taking boards scared me. Unlike today, where nurses know the results of boards within hours, back then, it took six weeks before we knew. My results arrived at home while I was in Richmond. My Mom called to say they were there. I had her open them and read the results over the phone. I screamed my excitement, of course, and told her to put them in the mail to me immediately so I could officially work as an RN.
After working the summer in the Emergency Department, I moved to Richmond to start a second nursing school at Virginia Commonwealth University to receive my BSN. The first two years of nursing school at a university are academic classes. Fortunately, I was allowed to test out of the first year based on my community college grades, but I had classes to take that were not offered by the community college for one year.
Another Nursing School Job
I lived in a dorm with eighteen-year-olds when I was twenty-one and worked as a Float Nurse at a local hospital when not in class. The private hospital where I worked, backed up to one of the dorms on the VCU campus, was smaller than the Medical College. Metropolitan Hospital had all private rooms and mainly saw acute medical or surgical patients, psychiatric, chemical dependency, and orthopedic patients. I worked “as needed,” meaning I could be assigned to work any shift or floor, which I loved because I gained experience in all the different units.
My starting salary was $5 in the float pool compared to today’s $45 starting salary for a nurse. Five dollars was an excellent salary in the early 1970s. Since I worked off-shifts, I also received an additional $0.10 for the evening shift and $0.15 for nights. Currently, shift differentials either run 25%- 35% of pay or $6-$7 extra per hour. Times have certainly changed since the nursing shortage salary wars of the 1980s.
I enjoy all areas of nursing, so working in the float pool while attending school was an excellent opportunity to gain experience in multiple specialties. After graduation, I decided to remain with Metropolitan and chose to work on their orthopedic floor as an evening shift RN.
