ICU Travel?

[ceverts]

Hello. I have always wanted to travel and finally signed up with an agency. I have been a nurse for 5 years, always working at the same facility, a 360ish bed community hospital. We are now a level 2 trauma center, as of the past 2 or so years. I have worked both Med-Surg and ICU (2 years each), most recently ICU. Our ICU is a 16-bed unit that is a sort of MICU/SICU/CICU/Neuro ICU all in one. We get IABPs, CRRT, EVDs, etc, but the problem is that I may have one and then not have that type of patient again for a year, so you never really feel totally comfortable or competent. For example, Ive only had one Impella, never cardioverted or paced, took the CRRT class when I first started but never had one and now need to re-take the class before I can. I also work Nights and it seems like a lot goes on during the day that we just don't do often on Nights, (emergent intubations, SBTs & extubations, etc). Many of our experienced RNs tell me I'm a good ICU nurse, including a former longtime traveler who tells me I'll make a great travel nurse and not to worry. I told the travel recruiter that I'd prefer to go to lower level ICUs because its what I know, and wondered if I should do Med-Surg, but he says ICU makes more and I will be ok (after filling out the Skills checklist). Im very contentious and a bit of a worrier and I just dont want to put myself (or future patients!) in a bad position. I know you have to be able to "hit the ground running", and I feel I may be fine in lower acuity settings but just wanted to see if anyone else shared this experience or has any insight/suggestions.

Thank you and sorry for the length of this post!

[NedRN]

Impossible to really know until you try an assignment how well you will perform. I wouldn't worry too much about a specific clinical case, you will not be assigned to a patient after informing the charge of your lack of experience in some skills needed for a particular patient presentation (vital to fill out your skills list accurately). More interesting is your ability to perform in an environment you've never been in before. One way to validate your flexibility before a three month commitment is to try working local agency. If your local area doesn't have that, try a different city a few hours away.

I'd only worked in one hospital prior to traveling so I had no idea if my clinical skills would translate to other facilities. So I did a few shifts at other hospitals and discovered that they were OK and have traveled ever since. Of course, that was back when paper charting was the norm and different EMR systems today make a new hospital assignment much tougher to transition to, even with excellent computer skills.