Is being agency nurse a good idea?

[jmeng]

Hi all,

I have been a nurse for 4 years. 2 years in telemetry, one year CT ICU stepdown, and the last year in med/surg ICU. I am planning to start looking for CRNA school to hopefully start schooling in sept 2011. I have 3.56 BSN GPA, and 3.7 MSN so far. I have taken research, pharmacology, and adv patho. I am also preparing to take CCRN certification soon. I want to just do Agency as ICU RN for the next year...main reason being that I want to experience different icus and gain more experience and another reason is to avoid working weekends. So my question is do u think being agency nurse will affect me in being accepted to CRNA school?

thanks.

[mildcigar_2001]

The one way it might hurt you is with regard to your references. A lot of schools seem to want one letter from you current nurse manager. If you just have a year or so to go till you go back to school, then if it were me I'd stay put at your current hospital (perhaps change to critical care float pool for more control of your schedule). Floating around to a lot of different hospitals is generally a bad idea. Most agency nurses tend to pick one or two hospitals to focus on. That way the hospitals get to know you and you get to know the hospitals. If you just show up for a day here and there then it makes life more difficult (you don't know where things are, you don't know the doctors, people you don't know aren't as eagar to help you). Plus you generally don't get the best assignments. Ever here the phrase "agency nurse assignment"? That would be the patient in DTs with c-diff.

[Destined4GreatnessRN]

Yeah agency work for an ICU will make the references thing a bit harder, but do your best to get to know the nurse manager and you will be alright and the charge nurses because they are the onces that make assignments. I work full-time in the MICU and prn agency ICU. I find that I don't get the hard assignment or the patients on multiple drips, ventilated etc because that don't know what you can do so they will generally give you an easy patient that really should be on the floor. And actually most agencys won't let you work ICU until you have a year of ICU experience.