Agency Nursing and Recommendations?

[JessicaMoskovits]

Hello All,

I have a masters entry degree in nursing and I've been an agency nurse for a little over 1 year, specializing mainly in ICU with some ER mixed in just for a break. Prior to that I've built up 2 years of general ICU experience plus another year and 8 months in ER. I'm BCLS, ACLS, PALS, CCRN and TNCC. That all sounds great, right? Here's the problem:

I have no idea where to get good recommendations from.

I spent the first 3 years of my career at one hospital and didn't feel I was ready to get good recommendations from any supervising nurses and my hospital was a teaching hospital which means I rarely saw an attending physician and didn't really have a chance to build up a good rapport with one. Then I hit a stumbling block and jumped from one hospital to another and then to another before I found that agency nursing was the best fit for me. During that period I didn't have the opportunity to build up the right relationships, and now I'm doing this and I feel stuck.

As an ICU RN, I'm a generalist and I float to every ICU you can think of. But because I'm an agency nurse, I don't stick around a hospital for very long. Sure, I'll come back to a facility from time to time and there are definitely hospitals that have their busy periods and you know they're going to need you, but that means staff can change to and so do supervisors and charge nurses who don't know you. Don't even get me started on RN managers; as an agency nurse, they don't really pay attention to you at all. I'm currently working (read: assigned) at a very large, well known teaching hospital, and I'm concerned that a good MD/nurse manager/unit director recommendation is out of my reach. I have a good report with the critical care director here, but she hasn't seen me work and only goes by hearsay (which has been exemplary, by the way).

What do I do? What can I do?

All responses are helpful, please and thank you!!