Interested in traveling. One year MS experience.

NedRN · May 3, 2020

No.

RNfromBK, ADN · May 3, 2020

How about a Med surg assignment?

NedRN · May 3, 2020

Possibly. You would be competing against much more experienced nurses, many with actual travel experience that makes them less risk than you. No downside to calling a few agencies to see what they think of your marketability. But honestly, you need more experience and judgement to be safe. Chances are good that you give up your staff job and are quickly terminated on your first assignment. Then what? You will also be taking a personal risk of becoming infected in the pandemic with the much worse insurance you will likely have as a traveler.

Ideally, you want at least two years in medsurg and ability to do tele - that makes you minimally safe and valuable to potential employers taking a risk on someone with low experience and no travel.

If your staff job does not seem challenging after one year, you need more diverse patients with higher acuity before you are ready to travel. Travel is way challenging and you at least need to be clinically ready to go along with completely new cultures, EMR software, patient flow, and pt population.

RNfromBK, ADN · May 3, 2020

OK those are pretty valid points. I spoke with two travel nurses who were assigned to my Unit and they both said that my floor is way tougher than other units they traveled to. Their reasons were that we staff a lot of students which makes med pass torture, our technology and software systems are outdated and inefficient, double rooms are the size of closets, majority of our patients are total care, etc.... I have traveled to another hospital for two weeks but it was only to assist them with migrating to epic software. That unit was like complete heaven compared to mine. So I’ve been functioning independently for several months now and I’m comfortable with my 6 or 8 pt assignments and the quality of care I provide. I guess what they said made feel like I progressed rather quickly and I’m ready to take on a travel assignment. On the other hand I’m reading posts that make me think there are way tougher units then mine which worries me because like you said I don’t wanna start an assignment and get thrown into a new encounter, flop it and get fired. I'm the type of person who constantly needs a change of pace. I can’t work in the same setting for too long because it gets too repetitive and dull which affects my work.

speedynurse, ADN, BSN, RN, EMT-P · May 4, 2020

On 5/3/2020 at 1:58 AM, RNfromBK said:
I want to travel with one year experience on a busy med surg unit. Would I be OK taking an ER assignment?

Generally, travel nursing requires 2 years. No to an ER assignment. ER is completely different mindset then med surg and travelers in this setting are experienced ER nurses.