Contract was terminated, help! do i list this job on my resume?

JustBeachyNurse, LPN · Oct 20, 2015

They absolutely can say if you were involuntarily terminated as long as it's truthful. In some states facilities must report to the BoN if a nurse is terminated.

Most hospitals will state condition of release (termination for cause, resignation, retired, laid off/reduction in force), dates of employment, job title, eligible for rehire and salary.

Roxy_Peet · Oct 20, 2015

i think it depends on the hospital, the circumstance etc. my best friend was fired from her hospital job where she had worked for 3 yrs, the hospital was not allowed to state that she was fired, only dates worked. if she had been fired for stealing narcs or something then i think it has to be reported to the BON. she has found future employment since and she always lists the hospital on her resume with no problem.

i am just curious about other travel nurses who have encountered something similar. do you just not mention it to future employers?

thanks.

nurse2033, MSN, RN · Oct 20, 2015

Don't put it on your resume or list it as experience. Is a few days valuable experience? If directly asked you can explain what happened. But I'm guessing you didn't learn anything that will progress your abilities or experience as a nurse, this is what your resume is for. If asked if you were ever fired you can simply explain what happened. Your story is completely benign and if I were an employer I wouldn't hold much stock in it.

NedRN · Oct 20, 2015

Contract work is very different than staff. You cannot be terminated at the drop of a hat (which is actually legal for staff who don't have a contract - no reason needed or "at-will" employment), but only for contractual reasons. You were terminated for non-performance of the contract: missing work. There may have been other reasons, like a bad fit, or low census, but you gave them a legitimate contractual reason. If you had not, you could sue for the balance of your contract (depending on the contract language).

There are bad actor facilities out there that do indeed terminate at a drop of the hat and make up a reason, but that is bad business, and a good agency/recruiter will tell you up front about the risks of a particular assignment, and better agencies will just refuse to do business with that hospital as they cannot afford it either. Then the hospital has to raise bill rates to compensate for this risk, and pretty soon it is just rapid response agencies that staff such hospitals. Bad behavior is to an extent, self limiting. But it can persist for years.

The best way to manage your career is get written references from every assignment. Your agency will get them, but they won't give them to you. So you have to get your own. Get them early, and often. Getting them before termination not only helps protect you from spurious claims, but it would have given you options now. It is entirely up to you whether to list this terminated assignment or not. Some agencies may require you explain any lapses in assignments, but most agencies know that travelers often take off considerable time between assignments. If you had gotten a written reference, yes, I would have included it. Both the agency and the hospital involved here will be happy to share with any one who asks if you are eligible for rehire. So it is safer to leave it off, especially if it was only a couple weeks (you didn't say how long).

PanTravelers have good samples of reference/evaluations samples for download/printing (a free signup required). They take just a couple minutes to fill out and I stand there waiting until done by a charge nurse or higher. You can get a more formal letter style reference, but those take much longer and require someone who really likes you.

NedRN · Oct 20, 2015

In some states facilities must report to the BoN if a nurse is terminated.

I'm not aware that any BON can do this. All states have at-will employment (about 35 states have specific legislation and the rest are just common law) and if the nurse is not working under a contract, the employer doesn't even need a reason to terminate. I have a difficult time believing that layoffs for low census (or any non-clinical reason) require reporting to the BON.

Roxy_Peet · Oct 21, 2015

thanks for the advice. yea i will probably just leave it off, i guess i am still just mad they terminated me like that and i didn't want the whole experience to go to waste. i just know that not everyone has a reference for every job they've had, and thought i could maybe leave it on if other agencies were only going to verify the dates worked, and not inquire about termination.

NedRN · Oct 21, 2015

Nope, rehiring status is standard.

Not getting references from every assignment, and not getting written references is doable, but is not optimizing your career. Doing so is professional, and it shows you care about your work.

Roxy_Peet · Oct 21, 2015

typically an employer only wants to read 2-3 reference letters. it does no one any good having a pile of rec's that aren't looked at, my recruiter said they would only list a few of the best ones anyways. when i got my second travel assignment i was hired based on the references from my first nursing job, which was on a heart and lung transplant step-down unit in the #1 cardiac hospital in the nation (if not world). the excellent rec letters i have from that job are far more important than from a 3 month med surg job at a small rural hospital imo.

NedRN · Oct 21, 2015

Good reference letters from a good hospital are, well good. However, you still need two current references from positions in the last 12 months. I have often found older written references valuable in a couple of circumstances to include with current ones. One is returning to a previous hospital. They might not know you five or ten years later and whoever wrote your letter might be long gone, but they will be impressed by a reference from their own hospital and someone will know the person who wrote it. Another situation I've run into more than once is a manager that I've worked with before is at a different hospital. Guess how helpful that reference is to include in your profile. HR cannot ignore it, remember they usually filter profiles before the manager sees what they pass along.

Roxy_Peet · Oct 21, 2015

true. i have three good references from my first travel job, and three good ones from my heart and lung transplant job, all are within the last 12 months. i hope to just move forward and continue to get good/recent recs.

NedRN · Oct 21, 2015

You are golden! Forget about this and move on. Cheap lesson. But if you have ongoing health or personal issues that cause you to miss work, you might reconsider staff jobs. Travel instead as staff for one year at a time!

Easy to lose track: I didn't realize you were the thread starter when I replied to your last post. You are in a good place with written references, I have a couple minimum from every assignment I've had for the last 20 years, including my one and only staff job. I was lucky to get them as I didn't start out knowing what I know now. A very long story about learning the hard way, but a friendly NM let me copy my entire file from several years with my first agency. Florida based agencies sometimes will tell you that if they send one, Florida law requires sending all of them. So I was lucky, even have a copy of the really bad evaluation that started the whole control freak thing I do now over my professional portfolio.