Need Advice! Experienced nurse, wants to travel, probably needs to tweak skills!

[exp626]

Hi,

I'm seriously thinking about travel nursing in the next few years, and I want to make changes now that would make me more marketable for that arena. I've been a cardiac nurse for several years. I've taught BLS and ACLS for several years as well, and am thinking about letting my instructor status lapse just because I've done it so long I'm over it...but I don't want to let that go if it would really help me in travel nursing. I'm thinking just the years of experience of teaching would be what's meaningful. Also, I take care of post angioplasties and ablations, so most days I have 3 patients due to all the lines. Because of doing that for so long, I'm afraid my organization isn't so good. It's time for a change, and I'm thinking with my plans to travel in the next few years, maybe I should join my hospital's float team for a more varied experience and to better my organizational skills. Leaving the cardiac world, I'd lose my ANCC cardiac-vascular nurse certification, but I could always get certified in med-surg. (I'd really love to go to critical care, but they require new CC nurses to work nights for a year, and I'm not willing to do that.) I don't want to ultimately hurt myself in the travel nurse market, though. I could really use guidance from some experienced travel nurses!

[hondaa]

I think you have the perfect experience! I am only on my second travel assignment, but most of the assignment I see are for tele. My recruiter is AMAZING and so is the company (Medical Solutions.) I did my 1st assignment in Fl with Parallon and I will never work for them or at an HCA hospital again. You can inbox me if you have more specific questions or I can help you in any way!!

Good Luck!!

[JenNurse1972]

I say take the plunge now! You have incredible ICU experience. So travel as an ICU nurse. You will be more valuable with your recent ICU experience than if you stopped doing that and went to Med Surg. It sounds like you could work an any type of ICU. Trust me...the recruiter will find you a position in your field of expertise.

[JenNurse1972]

Agreed on Parallon. Not a real travel agency. More like a nationwide registry for HCA. Understatement to say they have an agenda to staff only HCA and not make their travelers aware of good non HCA contracts.

[NedRN]

They have non-HCA contracts in theory, but I've yet to hear of a traveler going through Parallon to a non-HCA hospital. Even if they have such assignments, it would be well under 1% of all their assignments so they would not come up very often. Heck, I'd bet they only fill half of their own HCA assignments with in-house travelers, the rest going to the legions of subcontracting agencies.

[ERRNinMI]

Sounds like you have great experience for ICU travel. The more experience you have,the more marketable you will be. Like anything, change will occur and you will need to adjust to a new environment and experience. But in the end it will only help you grow as a nurse, not to mention you will meet some amazing people and hopefully experience things you may not have yet in your career! My advice is to research your agencies, and shop around. Research locations you are interested in and have the recruiter send you the nae of the facility so you can research it to see if it's ideal for them to submit your profile. Ideal meaning, somewhere you could work for 13 weeks minimum. Good luck!