Avera McKennan

I just realized that I have never blogged about the place I work. I spend 36 plus hours a week at this place, so I thought I would tell you a little bit about it.

Well, it is a Catholic hospital, so it integrates faith into the healing process and offers chaplain services to any patient in the hospital. It has 545 beds in the entire hospital, which is a pretty decent sized hospital.

I had all of my clinicals in nursing school at Avera, and I have been working at Avera since June 2009. I had an internship the summer of 2008, worked as a Patient Care Tech from August until February, and started as an RN in February. So I am pretty familiar with the facility.

The orthopedic floor that I work on ( 2 west) has 31 beds. We mainly deal with new hips, knees, and back surgerys. We also get a lot of medical overflow patients when the rest of the hospital is too full to handle them.

Our floor is usually very busy. I work 3 12-hour shifts a week, working both overnights and day shifts. I work every third weekend and every third holiday. I enjoy my nursing career, but there are definitely some days that are better than others.

So anyway, there is a short description of my job and the hospital I work at. It keeps me very busy. Thanks for reading!