nursing agency

[2ndCareerRN]

Good: ability to pick and choose your assignments. Ability to work when you want to work. Usually better pay than prevailing local wage. Ability to learn from many different people.

Bad: Treated like a leper for the most part. Given the patients with the highest acuity or highest maintenance. Better pay than coworkers, may cause resentment. Having to turn in time slip weekly, or multiple time slips if working more than one location/dept/day of the week. Being expected to walk into a unit you have never been before and knowing where all supplies, pyxis, and any important paperwork is without any orientation to unit.

But, even with the bad, I still would rather work an agency on my7 days off from my other position than sit around doing nothing.

My experience is strictly from a day to day assignment position, not a long term contract or a traveling position.

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Haji

We live in an age that if you order a pizza delivered to your house and call 911 at the same time to report a life or death situation....my money is on the pizza arriving first! Learn to protect yourself, become a wolf among the sheep!

[mustangsheba]

The good: You can choose which days you are available for work. If you need to take ten days off, you just tell your agency you won't be available. Pay is better. I can work around my school schedule. You don't have to get involved with office politics. If I don't like a facility, I don't have to go back. Bad: You have no input because you're not involved with office politics. No benefits. SOMETIMES you get dumped on. You walk in cold turkey to a place you've never been and get very little or no orientation. In summary, some places treat you like gold because they really need you; some places treat you like dirt because you're agency. On the whole, I prefer agency work.

[Lina]

Dear nurses!

I would really appreciate, if anyone can tell me about good as well as bad sides of working for an agency.(anyone with an experience in this area)

Thanks!