Learning new modalities / Travel Nursing Question

[CFrancine, BSN, RN]

I do acutes in a very large hospital so we have a dialysis department. The RNs however only do IHD. Techs do everything else. I know how to do CRRT from my ICU days but never touch it in this job so I'm sure I'm getting rusty (although the machine is dummy proof). Also, only the techs do PD. I want to learn PD to prepare myself for certification and traveling. I did PD one day when I was a new grad as the ICU RNs just handled it at that facility. I can tell it's not rocket science (although people F*ed it up anyway) but I'm sure there's a lot more to know than using the machine.

Would it be too ballsy to ask my boss if I can train on PD to better prepare me for when I am ready to leave? I mean, this won't be for at least a year or two. And I do have a good relationship with her so I feel like I should be honest but I KNOW how bosses can be when you're looking to leave. She did say a while back she could possibly work some time in to help for certification aspect. Should I just stick to that angle?

I figured the best way to propose this would be do it when patient census is low. If she's going to be paying me PTO anyway, she wouldn't be losing anything by letting my work some hours learning PD instead. Does that sound reasonable? If she does give me some time, how much should I shoot for?

In case it doesn't pan out, do any of you travel doing acutes without PD experience? Do places expect it? I'm guessing they won't train you. Anything else besides IHD, CRRT, and PD I should try to learn before traveling? My hospital does everything, I'll just have to figure out access to the info/training

[NurseRies, BSN, RN]

I traveled without any problems and I only knew HD. Most programs don't expect you to do it all, that would probably be too much training anyway. On my assignments they just gave isolation patients, ICUs, and a couple programs had me working with techs in the dialysis room. No one even asked in the interview about crrt or PD.

It never hurts to ask though, I learned how to set up the cycler in about 5 sessions. It's very simple, you learn alarms as time goes on. I think manual exchanges were more tricky then the cycler but it's all easy. Crrt programs are so different everywhere you go, it's just too much training. Fresenius uses a different cycler then Davita, so there's that too. Travel nurses are not expected to know crrt or PD even in acutes, certainly not TPE. With Davita acutes, I often got 1-2 days of training. No time for anything except HD. Fresenius gave me 1-2 weeks of training and was more organized.