How much experience before OR travel nursing?

[NedRN]

Typical OR internships are 9 months or longer at teaching hospitals. There an expectation or explicit contract for you to work 2 years.

Personally I stayed 3 years at the hospital that trained me but I wanted the extra year to gain more experience in open hearts. Then I tested whether my skills would translate to other hospitals by doing some agency per diem in my metro area before I took the plunge to travel. I can tell you that after umpteen years of travel, I have been super happy that I got all that training. It really served me well.

ER is more entry level than OR. You can get by with less training but more training always gives you a better practice basis. If you go for this route, it is better to start at a level one trauma center. Harder to do a community hospital (for OR too) and go to a teaching or trauma hospital - it limits your options for travel and your value to a manager.

Now for both ER and OR, you can go for less training, and practice at less demanding hospitals who don't need higher level experience and travel successfully. Less assignment options, and less money, and a higher possibility of unsafe practice environment due to lack of experience. Don't let any of that scare you if this is the way you want to go, you can turn down any assignment you believe you cannot handle safely (in fact your license requires it).

OR pays better than ER - pay as a traveler reflects your level of training more directly than staff. Free market economics. Conversely, there are more ER assignments than OR, so you will have a wider choice of locations needing travelers.

My best advice to you is ignore all of the above, shadow a nurse in both specialties for a couple of days, and choose the specialty you like best. Then deal with however you can manage to get into that choice.

[Rose_Queen, BSN, MSN, RN]

Pretty much the entire first year is orientation. 1 year of experience is not enough to be traveling. Heck, I think 2 years is pushing it. 

[NedRN]

3 years for me. Personally believe 2 years is super minimum for non-super nurses, but I have met community hospital trained OR travelers with only one year total. I was not impressed with their minimal abilities to float to various services.

I also met one OR traveler who had apparently never worked in a hospital. Rather she seemed to have picked up some knowledge working in a doctor's practice. Scrub techs begged me not to leave them alone with her. The funniest thing anecdote I heard will resonate with other OR nurses. Everyone breaks sterile technique accidentally at times, but she did something no OR nurse would ever screw up. End of case, tech asks for a pack of dressing sponges. She put a pack of dressing sponges  on the back table. Without opening it!

Her contract was eventually terminated but not for her clear incompetence. Rather it was determined she falsified her work history. Not entirely sure why the hospital took so long. I think they were a rare hospital that took a travel contract seriously like, well, a contract.

[Birdsofprey, BSN]

Thank you for your input- and I agree- regardless of whether I go for ER or OR, I want a Level 1 Trauma center (I started my career at an inner city Level 1 and even though it was hell it paid off). If I go for OR, I must make sure I am in a location I really want to be in(since I will posted there for a few years). 

[NedRN]

Good plan! Go somewhere cool and treat it like an extra long travel assignment.

[NedRN]

I suspect posting a similar query in the OR forum will get a good and varied response.

[Birdsofprey, BSN]

True!