Fired from my first travel gig after 4 days

[Birdsofprey]

Hi All,

I was hired as a travel nurse with 1 year of experience in Tele/then Covid stepdown(when the first wave hit NYC). I know that usually you need at least 2 years, but due to the Covid crisis, I was able to snag a travel nursing contract from a large agency.

I oriented for 1 day(I understand that is the norm). I trained with the senior nurse on a med-surg floor.

After that, I was floated 2 days in a row to PCCU, and Covid stepdown ICU for "me to help out". I did admissions, discharges, transfers, administered some meds, glucose, etc.

The 3rd day they assigned me to the same floor where I previously trained with a senior nurse for that 1 day. This is a med-surg floor. I was stressed only because it is different pumps, med dispensing system and glucometers than I am used to. I was running behind on meds but other nurses said "that always happens and they (management) do not care about that very much. 

Anyway, the next afternoon my travel agency calls me and tells me that the hospital decided not to move forward with my contract "because I am too inexperienced", and they cited a bunch of reasons which were absurd. Some were sort of valid but still miniscule according to other travel nurses I know. For example, they claimed I gave a patient a glucose tab they did not need, which is not true at all. They also claimed they had to give other nurses on the floor more patients because I could not handle the assignment- that is also not true- I was assigned those patients from the start of the shift. They also claimed I gave lantus 2 hours late and also did not give lunch aspart- both meals were hours late that day and the lantus was late because the FS was low enough that I had to confirm if it was OK from the doctor first, which took forever. The aspart was not needed due to the FS value (rolling scale). They also said I did not chart any assessments on my patients until hours into my shift (which from what I gather is typical at this facility also). I explained all this to the Clinical Director of my travel agency. 

I explained this to the Clinical RN Director of the Staffing Agency. They said the facility's Clinical Director "adored me" personally and would even hire me as staff to give me more training which makes ZERO SENSE if they think I am so horrible.

Because of this, my agency needs to make a decision among their clinical team to decide if I can move on to travel gigs after this. I will find out within a few business days.

I sounds like they were watching me moreso than others. I think this might be because of something that happened that 1 day that I trained with that senior nurse- she asked me how long I had been a nurse and I said "a year", without thinking anything of it. She made a face and glared at another nurse. She seemed to grow to like me over the course of the day, but now that this all happened I am starting to think I should not have disclosed that I have been an RN for a year and should have said "A few years" or something.

Would an experience like this keep me from getting travel contracts after this from this agency? 

I am just looking from feedback from people who are travel nurses. I am replaying how I did yesterday on the med-surg floor and I honestly keep feeling that I did OK for being new to a floor with a new med system and pumps than I am used to... I feel stupid now because I left a job to be a travel nurse and now I have no idea what is going to happen with this path.

Thanks.

[CeciBean, ASN, RN]

I got fired from my last travel job on Christmas Eve. It wasn't exactly my fault either. I'd been pulled from the unit I normally worked in--there were 3 travelers and it was not my turn and I said so, but whatever. So I went where they told me and started my assignment, which was horrendous. Barely got report, but one of my patients was a really nice man who spoke Spanish mostly and we were having a good encounter with my rusty Spanish skills when the supervisor burst in and started hissing at me. She got me in the hall and started yelling at me that this unit was not where she had told me to go. I told her that my name was on the unit sheet (it was) and she told me to stop arguing with her and "just go home, get out of my sight!" I did...it was Dec. 23. The next night I went to work as usual and the charge nurse in my unit looked at me with surprise and said did I not know my contract had been terminated. I didn't; neither the hospital nor my recruiter had had the decency to call me. I went back to my apartment and started packing. It wasn't until two days later that I heard from the recruiter and then it was "We are so disappointed and you will never work for our agency again!" She wouldn't even listen to me. By that time I didn't even care. It was a horrible disorganized hospital and such a bad agency. I had only taken that assignment because my usual one hadn't come through yet and I needed money. I moved and went permanent after that.

[NedRN]

That's pretty random and unfair. But par for the course for many terminations. Hard to shrug off.

I've had more than my fair share of terminations perhaps, partly because of my personal style. I won't bore anyone with details, but each termination was very different and will sound like a crazy story.

However, I persevered and have a story about persistence. I worked for one agency my first three and a half years and a month after a perfectly fine assignment, my agency  told me that they got a really bad evaluation on me. Sounded like they were evaluating someone else from my recruiter's description. This agency wouldn't give me evaluation copies claiming it was against Florida law (in addition, they said Florida law compelled them to deliver all evals on file to potential assignments).

 A couple assignments later (harder to find with that bad eval on record), I landed at a contract with a friendly NM (in fact she was also there on a manager travel contract) who printed out a copy of every evaluation I've ever had. The bad one was so bad, I wouldn't have hired me at all. Asking the NM why she did, she said it was a clear outlier and she ignores those.

Anyway, it taught me a very valuable lesson about maintaining one's own professional profile to have more control over your career. Since that point, I get my own evals at every assignment, usually several, and now I can dump the outliers myself and better manage the profile the next hospital sees. That initial agency also terminated me (which hurt worse than hospital terminations) because I raised a fuss about the bad eval and contacted the hospital about it (who eventually retracted it). Which made me a liability to the agency so I get it. Sort of. Clients are more valuable to agencies than even great travelers.