Re: American Mobile
Hi Nbrody,
I wanted to send you a link to a post I responded to back in Jan about travel nursing in particular.
http://allnurses.com/forums/f54/new-...er-272264.html
You can also reach the link by clicking on my user name and click link 'posts that I've replied to'. The title of the post is called New Traveler. There are 2 responses there with that title. You can read both for some good advice about travel nursing.
Anyways, in terms of American Mobile, I travel with them. Yes there are many assignments for L&D & my housing has been delux so far. I was referred to them by a traveler who was on assignment at the hospital that I worked for at the time. I am a new nurse and an L&D nurse - graduated in 2006 and started right away in L&D. My recruiter is ABSOLUTELY AWESOME!! She is the main reason why I stay with AM Mob. Many other agencies pay better, but in terms of reliability and trust worthiness in your agency and recruiter, Am Mobile gets the award in my opinion. My recruiter also specializes in L&D (which gave her extra pluses in my book). I just tell her where I want to be and she tells me which hospitals in that area are great in L&D. She gives me her honest advice - a few times she's told me that she wouldn't send one of HER travelers to this hospital or that for L&D. You will find many people who have experiences with different agencies, but i feel that most of the dissatisfaction comes from a bad recruiter-traveler relationship/connection.
I also feel that my specialty (L&D) is so different from other specialties in nursing and so it helps tremendously to have a recruiter who specializes in my field. What is important in an assignment to an ER or Med Surg nurse may not be important to an L&D nurse. (Just got a call from my agency as I was typing this - turns out my recruiter is out of the office for a coupe of days and her assistant was just calling me notify me of this and to see if there was anything I needed - is my assignment going ok, etc. Simple courtesy call - Don't know how many other agencies do that

) Getting back to my thought, yes, so to me if I'm talking to my recruiter and i'm upset that this doctor started pitocin on a vbac, she knows why I would be concerned. A recruiter not familiar with L&D may think I'm just having a bad day. Know what I mean?
SO, I would say, first think about WHY you want to travel then WHAT is important to you for an agency (more $$, a great recruiter, many locations to travel to [whether you want national travel only or international travel], great benefits). Once you do this soul search you can narrow down your search for an agency because your radar will be more specific based on what your requirements are. A person traveling for the sake of the highest rate, may not care too much about housing, or support from their agency, etc. and so will choose the highest paying agency.
I was just coming out of my first nursing job and so I wanted an agency/recruiter that would be readily available in terms of SUPPORT. So my requirement order was and is Great Recruiter, Good Money, Locations, Benefits. What's the sense of being in this beautiful place, making all this money, if when I truly need my agency to back me up, they aren't there?? I worked too hard for my license. L&D is a very shakey ground to walk on in and of itself! In American Mobile, I found an AWESOME recruiter, who loves what she does, listens to what I want to do and where I want to go and offers great advice to help make the best of my travel experience. For example, I tell her the 3 or 4 states that I want to travel to this year she will tell me what's a great time of year to be here or there so that I can get the most from my assignment/area. She stays in contact and is the center point for me - SHE does the work of contacting housing, makes the arrangements etc. I was speaking to a traveler the other day and she was having all this problem with her housing and at first I thought she took the housing stipend and just chose a crappy housing on her own, but she told me her agency provided the housing and is telling her SHE has to deal with all the problems the complex is giving her. THey totally left her hanging. My current assignment ends next week and I've already got my NY assignment lined up (again my recruiter knew my 3 locations for this year & @ the 8th wk mark, automatically started sending me options for NY). It will be my 3rd assignment with American Mobile and I truly don't intend on leaving them or my recruiter anytime soon.
By the way, you should also know that there really are only 3 Large travel nursing agencies: American Mobile Network, RN Network, Cross-Country Travel Corp. Many of these smaller companies work under one of these 3. For example, American Mobile, Nurse RX, Preferred Staffing, Medical Express and some others are owned by American Mobile Network.
Hope all this info helps. Let me know if you want my recruiter's information and I'll be glad to provide it.
-Carrie
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