Newer nurse looking to travel and advice!

I started travel nursing after only 15 months working as an ICU nurse. The good thing about the ICU i started in was that it was a relatively big hospital for a medium-sized city. Our unit had 16 ICU beds and 8 Step-down beds. Sometimes we would use the 8-bed step-down unit to house ICU patients. Most importantly, we did not have a separate Cardiac, Med-surg, or Neuro ICU unit. All of those different cases came to us, which gave every ICU nurse at our hospital really good experience in working with a variety of patients. Most of the bigger cities have a separate cardiac ICU, Med-surg ICU, and Neuro ICU; and from my travel experiences, those nurses in the specialty units weren't as proficient when they were floated to different specialty ICU's. I was really comfortable in working in each of those units when I was on assignment at a big hospital in the bigger cities.

Unfortunately, when the recession hit pretty late last year and earlier this year, travelers were being used less and contracts were pretty difficult to get. So, I had to give up the travel RN thing and started grad school. I really miss it a lot. You learn a lot more traveling, too. Docs, RN's, and RT's from different hospitals may treat a pt with sepsis totally different than what you're used to. I learned that there's a lot of different ways to treat patients with the same illness.

If you feel confident and proficient in the unit you currentlywork in, then I say go for it. Don't listen to those people that say you need a few years under your belt before you start traveling. Not everyone is on the same learning curve. I went straight into ICU right out of nursing school when other people were telling me that "you need X amount of years or experience as a med-surg nurse before you go to ICU or ER or any other specialty." I don't agree with that at all. However, i do think you probably need about a year's experience in the same specialty you plan on doing your travel nursing. Plus, most, if not all, travel companies require at least a year experience in your particular specialty before they even consider you for a travel assignment. Good luck.