I would like to tell you all that regardless of all the bad reputation some may say about American mobile I can say that compare to other agency that I have tried so far , I can honestly say my experience with AMN have been nothing but pleasant, I didn't get that if you don't like it then that's all we can offer, they were more than willing to work with me by making sure that I am happy with placement. In another words before any of you travelers decide to travel with an agency don't judge until you yourself have the experience of working with that agency..
Most of the time, it is recruiters posing as travelers that are praising their own agency. Those are pretty easy to spot when their first three posts on Allnurses are nothing but agency praise, often mentioning the recruiter name (their self). cicin2222's post was clearly authentic.
I'm currently on assignment with AMN and I thought I would give an honest description of my experience.
While first considering travel nursing I researched a little bit, took a look at PPR, Fastaff, AMN, Travelcorp, among other smaller agencies. I decided on AMN, in a large part due to a good friend who was on assignment with them, and I have mixed reviews. My recruiter, while very nice, doesn't necessarily have my best interests at heart. I come from an ICU, PCU background and her first suggestion was that I take a contract in long term care just to get my feet wet in travel nursing. While I had limited experience with traveling, I felt as though this was a bad decision. So after declining, what seemed like tons of suggestions, I decided on a little contract in the northeast.
So, someone mentioned earlier about the compartmentalization of their tasks. You have an individual for every department you will have to interact with. So there's a different person for payroll issues, compliance, credentialing, contracts. Which seems like a novel idea, but in practice it is somewhat a disaster. In my experience, no one really understands who responsibility it whose. I get bounced around from one department to another trying to fix a relatively minor issue. More importantly, while my recruiter has stayed the same, basically every other person has changed multiple times. I think I'm on my 5th or 6th credentialist for the next contract. And each time they change the new credentialist keeps trying to get me to submit the same paperwork I've already submitted. So, it's time consuming and quite frustrating. The recruiter will also tend to promise things that they may not be able to deliver upon. Such as the quoted living accommodations are quite different that reality.
So all in all when I first started Travel Nursing I didn't exactly know how this all works out, but I've had an epiphany quite recently. One that I'm willing to share:
Realize that you, as a nurse, are the commodity. It is your skills that the hospital is desperate for. Not the recruiters, not the agencies, but the nurses. So keep an open mind when negotiating contracts, pay, and benefits. The ball is really in our court, realize what you're willing to work for and don't work for anything less.
NedRN
1 Article; 5,785 Posts
Most of the time, it is recruiters posing as travelers that are praising their own agency. Those are pretty easy to spot when their first three posts on Allnurses are nothing but agency praise, often mentioning the recruiter name (their self). cicin2222's post was clearly authentic.