ED Travel Nurse questions

[Jdamitz2]

I've been an ED nurse of two years now and going to start traveling. I just had a few questions regarding this. First being as a travel nurse will they place you in the Triage area or do they keep that for staff nurses, also along that question would you also get assigned to trauma bays? Or are you kind of treated like a float nurse and just get low acuity patients. Also do you get canceled ofter in the ED or do they usually have you work all of your shifts? Any other advice to tips would be great too :) Thanks.

[ParalyticAgent]

I've been assigned to triage as a traveler, but only after several weeks. I assume they want to make sure I have some sort of appropriate clinical judgment before they trust me with triage.

As far as assignments go, I've found that I've often been given higher acuity assignments. The places I've been have had high staff turnover, so I think that once I've proven myself competent, staff RNs are more than willing to take a lower acuity assignment. I've been primary RN in traumas and resuscitations as a traveler more times than I can count.

I've never worked in an ED which requires its nurses to float. In my experience, most EDs do core staffing, and the option to go home is usually only offered a couple of hours before the end of a shift. I specifically ask about floating during the interview and make certain the manager knows I do not feel comfortable floating. This has never been a problem.

I also only do contracts with guaranteed hours- usually there's a 24-36 hour grace period where you are not compensated for cancelled hours, but after that you are compensated fully.

Good luck! Travel nursing is such a great adventure!

[HikingNinja, BSN, MSN, DNP, RN, APRN, NP]

I've only done high volume high acuity ED assignments so far. No triage, but I can understand why. It's just more efficient to have triage nurses who are very experienced with the unit flow and protocols to take care of that. No loss for me. I do lots of triage shifts at my home facility. As for super sick pts and trauma, I've done both traveling. It's just up to the facility.