career path advice

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Are there any LPN travel agencies in your area? Although there are a few LPN travel nurses, they tend to be rarities. The overwhelming majority of travel nurses in the US are RNs due to their universal scope of practice across the different states.

You'll need acute care experience to be considered 'experienced' for travel assignments. Med/surg counts as acute care hospital experience. Research nursing at a cancer center generally does not.

I think that you need to obtain a job practicing in the license you earned. I am an LPN whose primary job is working in a clinic (in a hospital setting). I have weekends and holidays off. To be honest, I would not trade it for the world and do not intend to.

However, I also know that it is beneficial to have med-surg or bedside experience. I am fortunate enough to be able to work per diem on med-surg at the very hospital I am already employed in. As a new grad, I had to work on med-surg for 6 weeks, and it was so disorganized that I ran from there since it was not to be my regular assignment. That was 2006. Since then, it always sort of haunted me that I was not getting med-surg experience, so, I decided to do something about it. My hospital does not pay overtime to people who work in different departments, but will gladly give the names of the agencies they utilize so we can work and get paid under them (which is much more money, funny enough). I had to do a two day orientation, and last week, I was on my own for the first time. I survived the shift, and am glad that I am doing it. And the benefit is that I am doing it on MY terms...when I want to, versus HAVING to. This will pad my resume, because no one has to know that I only did it like twice a month...they just want to see at least a year or two of med-surg. I call the inpatient supervisors once a week and tell them when I want to work and they'll see what is available. Usually, I get what I want. Also, this is prime vacation time, which makes it even better, because I'll be getting hours steadily at least until the end of September, and it'll probably pick back up around Thanksgiving, Xmas, etc... I also plan to eventually phase over to psych to get some more experience under my belt.

I do believe that one or two things can happen; it will be either that you will get comfortable not working as a nurse at all, or will be too afraid to because of lack of exposure. And most places seem to want to know if you have 'paid your dues'.