TravelingbeebryantRN & Flicks_withNick

My name is Dominique Bryant, and I’m a travel nurse currently traveling the United States, with my husband. My husband Nicholas works in finance, and works from home. He is able to travel with me. We recently got married in October 2021, and decided to start travel nursing. I started travel nursing because I was very burnt out from COVID, and my primary nursing job in Maine. We recently just finished an assignment in Springfield, Oregon. We accepted a job in Oregon with the intention of doing some hiking, exploring some national parks, and also exploring the other Portland. Did you know that Portland Oregon got their name from a coin flip between Portland and Boston, and landed on Portland?

My husband and I are very busy people… On our way to our next assignment, we always make a bucket list for our assignment. It’s honestly one of my favorite things to do. I really enjoy suggesting things to future renters and readers. Follow my Instagram for our adventures in Oregon at @travelingbeebryantRN. I first want to talk a little about our Oregon Adventures, just because I feel like I have so many good suggestions. See our condensed bucket list below for our Oregon assignment! ( How many places can you check off? We just missed one! How frustrating is that!! I didn’t even include it on the chart because I’m so frustrated… We unfortunately missed Crater Lake. I was telling someone at work that my husband and I were going to Crater Lake that weekend and they told me, “have you looked at the weather, it’s probably closed due to snow?” I went home to tell Nick and we were shocked to find out it was closed in April due to snow! We also included some great food, coffee, and drink places in the surrounding area. If you are staying in the Eugene apartment, we also left a list that was given to us by my employer of suggestions. Nick and I typically did takeout or date night on Saturday nights. We highlighted or put a star next to the places that we tried. Two stars indicate places we highly recommend!

While we did a lot of fun things in Eugene/Springfield the last three months, we did come to Springfield to work. Kinda a bummer that work is a thing, isn’t it? I am a travel nurse, and I was hired to work at Peacehealth Sacred Heart Medical Center at Riverbend. I try not to talk about my experience at the medical center until my contract is over. For the most part, I really had a positive experience at Riverbend in Springfield. I am a medsurg/medtele/IMC/PCU nurse. I was hired as a medtele nurse at Riverbend. If you aren’t in the nursing field, you won’t understand this lingo, but these are some necessary things to know. The hospital used an epic charting system. On days, it was typical to have 5 patients on a medsurg or medtele floor. Typical drips on these floors were heparin, non titrated drips, and insulin gtts. They had techs that were super helpful, in terms of incontinence care, turns, vitals, and blood sugars. They did not have a turn team, but had lab techs, respiratory therapy, rapid response teams, iv therapy, and also transport teams. The hospital was very traveler friendly and welcoming. I found the manager very welcoming and accommodating. In terms of scheduling, they did put travelers on many weekends. It was not placed in my contract in terms of how many weekends were required. I think if I would accept an assignment there again, and if weekends were a deal breaker to me, I would definitely place a clause in my contract about this. I accepted a 13 week contract and I was hired for 48 hours a week. In my contract, they were not allowed to cancel for low census. I was never canceled for low census. The floor was often short staffed. I was floated 3 times during my assignment. I worked 12 weeks at Riverbend. The facility canceled travelers hospital wide. I was canceled a week early. Aya reimbursed me for my housing for the week I was canceled. You could tell how badly the manager felt about this and apologized on multiple occasions. The hospital attempted to shut down the unit I worked on and close beds to help with staffing. Overall, I had a great experience at Riverbend, and would recommend this hospital.

Now let’s talk about where we stayed during our assignment! I am going to link the furnish finder at the end of this blog. I know it’s currently rented till September. They rented it so fast! We had the opportunity to rent at the Riversong Community Housing for three months during my Contract at Peacehealth Sacred Heart Medical Center at Riverbend. I want to first touch on the location of the apartment. The apartment is located on a dead end approximately 15 minutes from the hospital, 5 minutes from multiple grocery stores, 11 minutes from Costco, and 15 minutes from the shopping center. The apartment is quiet with not a lot of street traffic noise. The apartment complex has access to the River walk trail. The access leading to the trail has poor lighting. Once you are on the actual trail, the River walk trail is well lit. The lights go on at approximately 5:12 am and are on late into the night. The river walk is a long pathway that borders the Willamette River. The pathway leads to Skinner Butte Park and historic Eugene downtown. My husband and I enjoyed walking the river walk every morning. This was a major pro to the Oakleigh Lane Apt 111 apartment. You will see a high amount of homeless population on this trail. We’ve never felt unsafe on this trail, but just keep high alert. Also, if you see a stray gray cat that is super friendly… We called him Timmy. You may also see Jim (our landlord) on the bike trail on his bike early in the morning! We attached some pictures of the Riverwalk trail for reference of lighting in the morning!

Now, let’s talk more about Apt 111… we move every 13 weeks and need to make the new place our home. We do this simply by bringing our special blanket, our year round Christmas tree that travels, and our pictures of our families and our rent a dog (how we met). They say that home is where your heart is, and we believe that is true. We also believe that travel nursing has helped us grow as a couple and as people. We originally found the apartment on furnished finders. Jim and Sandi facetimed us showing us the apartment, so we knew exactly what to expect. ( Side note, if you don’t know what furnish finders is, it’s a website geared towards military and travel nurses for short term housing. People rent their furnished houses for short term or long term leases for less fees than Airbnb. We have had great success with this website the last 5 assignments. I will be writing a future blog of how to find housing for a travel assignment! Keep an eye out! ) Jim, Sandi, and the community made sure we felt welcomed when we arrived. This was definitely a different experience than what we were used to. We were used to an apartment, where no one noticed us, and we did our own thing. I think if you wanted a sense of privacy, this would definitely be a problem. It was nice to know that we did have resources, and have someone there if we needed someone. They offer community dinners three days a week, and other meetings. This was a little overwhelming for us. Nick and I both work a lot, and are newlyweds. In the beginning, I will admit that we both felt almost “obligated” when we would get a lot of invites for things, but I think after the first two weeks, people understood that we were working people, and also really were here to explore. I wouldn’t say it wasn’t that we didn’t want to attend, or had no interest in the community folks, it was more the fact that we had so much to do here and so little time. After just a couple weeks, people started to understand our regular routine and we would occasionally show up to dinners. We really enjoyed the dinners we came to! I think setting expectations for renters is super important. If you want your renters to be involved in the community, make sure that it’s known.

The apartment is a three bedroom two bath. The front door opens up into an open concept kitchen and living room. See pictures below of the kitchen and dining room set up. The kitchen was well stocked with plates, silverware, bowls, cups, and miscellaneous items. We were quite excited as our last apartment had 2 spoons, 2 forks, and 2 knives. The only disappointment was how dirty the kitchen and even the rest of the apartment was. We had to run all the cups and silverware through the dishwasher before using any of them. It looked like the items were bought at a second hand store, and not washed. We had a cup of curdled milk in the microwave. This was something that was a little disappointing, as we had just driven 55 hours and didn’t expect to be doing. The cabinets were also filled to the brim with misc items, some that were dirty and even some that weren’t functioning. We personally would suggest filtering through some of these items. People do travel with items and would like to put some of their personal items in the cabinets and some people really are bothered by clutter. Although, some people really enjoy all the gadgets! We personally travel with a kitchen bin with misc. items, just in case some places don’t have things and things we are particular about. The only thing about putting stuff in every cabinet, it takes up a lot of food storage space. They had someone come live in the apartment for a time frame to see what was missing, which was crucial, but I don’t think they cleaned in between us moving in. The couch was super comfortable. Apt 111 came with an older TV that didn’t offer cable or streaming capabilities. My gamer husband invested in a Roko tv, and we ended up selling it on Facebook marketplace. If you rent from Jim and Sandi, I would suggest bringing a TV with streaming if you want any TV capabilities. The open concept and big open windows allowed natural sunlight to flow through the apartment.

One of the bedrooms is a smaller bedroom that was used as an office. Along with the desk, it had a bookshelf and a daybed. Jim and Sandi were kind enough to even put a desk/chair for Nick to use for work. This was a great work environment for him. This was the first furnished finder that included an office environment. Nick was feeling kind of spoiled! The master bedroom was a good size with a queen bed. I think one disappointment was the sheets that were on the bed. The sheets that came on the bed were unfortunately stained. The landlord provided a second set of sheets in the office bedroom, but the spare sheets also had holes in them. We replaced the sheets in the first 24 hours and the landlord refunded us. It had a tall dresser to fit undergarments, along with two nightstands. The master bedroom had two closets with nice shelving. I included some photos of the master bedroom for size comparison.

The last bedroom was the spare bedroom. It had a queen bed and two nightstands. We didn’t use this bedroom much, except for storage. We used the closet for food and misc. storage. All the bedrooms and beds were good sizes and very comfortable. See below some pictures of Nick’s office space and spare bedroom.

The desk to the right was provided by Jim and Sandy. Thanks Jim and Sandy!

We paid $2400 a month to live at Riversong co-housing apartments. I know that seems steep, but for a furnished apartment with utilities included that is pretty reasonable. This apartment had laundry included. It was in the common house shared with other individuals. We didn’t find it too busy, as long as you went earlier on in the day. We typically would place a load in before our morning walk. We had access to the common house at any time. The common house included a craft room, music room, mail room, and kids playroom. They required renters to be scent free in the common areas (laundry included). Honestly, this was an adjustment for Nick and I. We felt that we didn’t get our clothes as clean. We did feel a little insulted when they posted a notice about plastic waste in terms of buying bulk laundry bottles, and we were the only ones with a bulk laundry bottle.

Overall looking back at our experience at Springfield/Eugene and at Riversong Cohousing, we would resign this lease and this contract at Peacehealth. Jim and Sandy were great landlords overall. They were very pleasant, welcoming, and it was a good experience. I was very impressed with Peacehealth and how they treated their nursing staff. I remember coming home my first day and saying to Nick, “I had a lunch break today. It’s going to be a good contract” It feels pathetic and pretty low that that’s considered a good day in the nursing world. It’s the little things in life. If you have any questions about peacehealth in Springfield, Riversong, or Jim and Sandy’s furnish finder please reach out. If you are interested in renting Jim and Sandy’s place, contact me and I get you in touch!

Thanks for reading and watch out for some upcoming blogs about our recent weekend trips to San Francisco, California and Portland, Oregon. Where in the world will the Bryant’s go next? Well I can actually tell you. We went home to NH/ME for a week to visit our loved ones for a week and then we started our new contract. We are currently located in Everett Washington! We just finished up our first week and moved into our new furnished finder. Stay tuned for some details.