Mainland Medical Center; Texas City, TX

[Jjpount862]

This is my first assignment and I am very nervous. I have so far only read terrible things about Mainland Medical Center. The pay is not the best but I am willing to take the cut to avoid Houston traffic. I will be staying with family 10 minutes from the hospital.

Have you ever worked there? I will be working on the 5th floor. To you seasoned travelers out there, what would you consider your most valuable advice to brand new travelers with 1year experience as an RN?

Thanks

[BigT]

My advice is to get more experience as a RN. I firmly believe that a person needs more than one year as a RN before they go traveling. Do you remember what it was like for your first 3 months as a nurse? Now take that and condense that into 13 weeks and only receiving 2-3 days on average of training. As a new nurse you get months of training- as a traveler 1-3 days. And if you don't know the charting system- oh boy oh boy are you in deep. I mean you no ill will and do wish you the best but I know that even me, at one year of experience, would never have been close to having enough experience to travel. I guess it depends on what your specialty is, mine is ICU, so I can only relate it to that. I have 5 +years as a nurse with almost all of it being ICU and I find traveling challenging to do. That was working in 2 different trauma ICU's as regular staff before traveling btw. Each hospital is different and its own animal. I pray you have a nice travel friendly unit and they are helpful to you. If not- I pray you learn fast and ask questions if you are unsure of what you need to do or how to do it. A word of advice I tell myself all the time- always smile and never show your stress to others...its contagious....