How did you know you were ready to travel nurse?

[NewNurseHS, BSN, RN]

Hi everyone!

I am wondering how you knew you were ready to take off and be a travel nurse? What made you feel you would do well as a travel nurse?

I started my nursing career working in a progressive care unit at a large teaching hospital. We focused on cardiothoracic surgery and transplant and had a ratio of 1:3-1:4 and my patients were a mix of general care and IMC. I worked here for one year prior to moving and working in a much smaller hospital in the PACU. I’ll be coming up on working in the PACU for one year soon, and would like travel as a PACU nurse. Do you think I would be adequately prepared to travel as a PACU RN after one year of working in the PACU and 2 years of RN experience? Or should I wait closer to the 2 year mark of PACU experience? Any travel PACU nurses with advice/tips/insight would be much appreciated. 

Thank you in advance! 

[NedRN]

You probably can travel successfully. Often PACU nurses are in such demand that they will take ED nurses. The way my mind works though, it would be good to have more experience, ideally in a larger hospital with tougher cases. Better to be over qualified and able to adapt than vice versa.

I had the good fortune to start my career in a large teaching hospital. Even so, I stayed staff for three years in my specialty and even then tested my own abilities by doing per diem in other hospitals to see how well I could adapt. Turned out that my training was excellent and practiced as a traveler in nationally known name hospitals and tiny rural hospitals without any clinical issues at all.

But you certainly don't have to be super nurse to travel successfully. Like I said, just how my mind works. Same thing in nursing school, tried to learn it all!

[NewNurseHS, BSN, RN]

35 minutes ago, NedRN said:

You probably can travel successfully. Often PACU nurses are in such demand that they will take ED nurses. The way my mind works though, it would be good to have more experience, ideally in a larger hospital with tougher cases. Better to be over qualified and able to adapt than vice versa.

I had the good fortune to start my career in a large teaching hospital. Even so, I stayed staff for three years in my specialty and even then tested my own abilities by doing per diem in other hospitals to see how well I could adapt. Turned out that my training was excellent and practiced as a traveler in nationally known name hospitals and tiny rural hospitals without any clinical issues at all.

But you certainly don't have to be super nurse to travel successfully. Like I said, just how my mind works. Same thing in nursing school, tried to learn it all!

Thank you so much! That is very helpful insight and I relate to you with always trying to be over-prepared, that is very much my approach to everything.