I will never work with this agency again. Wow this is a long story but I'll try to summarize quickly. I just completed an assignment at DHMC. I will preface this by saying, I have worked as a staff nurse and agency nurse before but this was my first travel assignment and I have never received poor ratings regarding my nursing care...EVER.
While at this assignment, I was asked four times to extend my contract, to which I politely declined. My manager just asked me last week to renew again and when I declined she says, "Never forget us here, maybe come back in the summer."
So fast forward a week. My recruiter emails me that I received a "below standard eval". I ended up talking with Cross Country's clinical liaison arguing against what was written about me. The manager lied!! The liaison said he will get with manager to discuss the points I brought up. This occurred at 2pm.
I received a phone call from my recruiter at 445pm to "update on what's happened in the past 2 hours". (I recently interviewed for a Pediatric position and was offered the job, I was just waiting to interview with the other hospitals that called me). My recruiter tells me that she's required to send any eval to any job I've been submitted for so she sent this eval to the hospital that offered me the job and they retracted the job offer. I asked her why she would do that when the liaison was currently doing research to validate or refute the eval comments that were made. She said, "It's my job to send that eval."
My issue is, as your recruit your job is to advocate on my behalf. She has never heard a negative eval of me from any of my jobs. So you would think she would call me prior to sending that eval. In addition, why not get a rebuttal statement from me to attach to that eval or wait until the clinical liaison concluded his research? But she prematurely sent that eval. There were selfish reasons behind it. I will be following up with the Director of the company on Monday.
I have had several issues with this recruiter. She is not a nurse nor has ever been so at times, she does not understand things I tell her or things I require from a job opportunity because she's always had an office job. She is incompetent. And she forgets that taking a job away from me, loses money for Cross Country and takes away from her funds. Once this is cleared up, I will no longer work with this company and most especially this recruiter. And you'd be wise to do the same.
I've never worked for CrossCountry. I've heard too many negative things about them over the years so I doubt I ever will. Most recently another traveler that I am currently working with has been with them for several years and was promised a sign on bonus if she renewed her current contract. She did and now they are refusing to pay her. So she will be leaving them after this contract is up. There are some good companies out there. Sounds like it is time for you to to move on and find one
I was working with a hospital through a company that works with cross country. They refused to provide a bed for me while on contract. I slept on the floor while working 12 hour shifts in a trauma center. While at the facility I did the best I could to protect my patients and my license. At one point an anesthesiologist pushed propofol in the pre-op area and walked away without telling anyone what he had pushed. My patient went down and I had to bag her until she cleared the protocol and came around. The day after I reported it to the manager at the hospital in Colorado, my contract was cancelled. When I tried to explain what happened to my recruiter, he responded that he wasn't medical and didn't know what I was talking about. He then said the hospital was going to report me to the board of nursing for being unsafe. Yesterday I was told that cross country has blackballed me from all hospitals and contracts they work with. So much for protecting our patients and more importantly our licenses and practice.
I was working with a hospital through a company that works with cross country. They refused to provide a bed for me while on contract. I slept on the floor while working 12 hour shifts in a trauma center. While at the facility I did the best I could to protect my patients and my license. At one point an anesthesiologist pushed propofol in the pre-op area and walked away without telling anyone what he had pushed. My patient went down and I had to bag her until she cleared the protocol and came around. The day after I reported it to the manager at the hospital in Colorado, my contract was cancelled. When I tried to explain what happened to my recruiter, he responded that he wasn't medical and didn't know what I was talking about. He then said the hospital was going to report me to the board of nursing for being unsafe. Yesterday I was told that cross country has blackballed me from all hospitals and contracts they work with. So much for protecting our patients and more importantly our licenses and practice.
I'm so sorry to hear this happened to you. There's a site where you can leave reviews for your agency and recruiter as well as that facility you worked so future travelers will be aware of the situations and make informed decisions. You can leave your recruiter review at Recruiter Database There is a reporting link near the top and you can leave your facility review at Facilities Database
Travelers need to know about facilities and recruiters like this, the only way we're going to fix these problematic entities is by communicating with each other.
At one point an anesthesiologist pushed propofol in the pre-op area and walked away without telling anyone what he had pushed. My patient went down and I had to bag her until she cleared the protocol and came around.
Odd story. Never seen an anesthesia provider use propofol in preop before. If she was headed into the OR, why did she not go? Are you sure it wasn't Versed or perhaps a pain medication because of excessive pain?
But if that did happen, I hope you wrote an incident report and documented it in the chart.
It was odd that he pushed propofol in preop. I had asked him to give the patient some versed because she was so anxious that she was crying and hyperventilating. He said he would give her some versed and after I got her in the room he said it was versed mixed with propofol and stated "that's the last time I do a good deed." I spoke with the charge nurse and she agreed that he should never have pushed propofol in the pre-op and that they were lucky I was there to handle it when she went down. I wasn't given the chance to do an incident report. That was my friday and I worked the rest of the night in OR's. The following monday I told the nurse manager. I was kept in rooms for the duration of my shift and wasn't given time to do much of anything other than prepare for procedures. The next morning they cancelled my contract. I did send a message to their HR department outlining the incident. Hopefully they are working on doing something about the environment in the OR at that facility. The manager that let me go has multiple write-ups against her and, from what I understand, she has gone through more than 80 employees over the last year (not including travelers).
Unless they flat out lie, you may have a good lawsuit and a chance of a decent settlement. Even better if they report you to the BON. Would have been better had you filed an incident report and kept a copy. You would have to find a lawyer willing to take it on spec. Probably no fault of CC, but they should be doing a clinical review with a nurse in their own risk management. I'd ask. At least you might find out what lies the hospital is peddling.
Thank you NedRN. I have contacted a lawyer and he never called back. I am working on filing a report with JAHCO as per the suggestion of the BON. I have been in close contact with the BON since this occurred. The trouble is finding a lawyer that will support nurses and not go with where the money is, in my opinion. Any suggestions?
It would be an employment lawyer you need. They tend to be scarce in non-union states, but in any case, I doubt that they would be interested in such a relatively small case like yours. But I recall there is a site to search for employment lawyers.
You mentioned Aureus in another thread today. So Aureus was your actual employer and CC was the vendor manager I presume? So my feelings about Aureus is well known, they are the worst agency I know of going back 15 years to the present day, at least for travel nurses. They have a better rep for treatment of imaging professionals - they started out as local radiology therapists. Certainly not backing you up is expected from Aureus. I wouldn't believe anything they say, it is quite possible that CC has not blackballed you. You may be able to fix that if they are considering that as I had suggested, but you don't need access to Cross Country's exclusive contracts to be a successful traveler.
While none of us, and perhaps you, won't be able to understand the dynamics involved with your termination, it is likely that there was some personal interaction that played a major role here. Try to replay those from that day to see if it gives you a clue about the real reason here. It can be something quite subtle below your threshold of normal sensitivity to how you are coming off with staff members. If you can figure it out, it will help you in not repeating that error.
Even the best of travelers can be terminated - I've seen lots of excellent travelers terminated for silly reasons, including myself. Mind you, I do have an edge so my odds of termination are at least average despite my above average clinical skills. There are a few travelers who have survived 20 years without a single termination, but they are rare. The industry "fall off" rate is one out of 10 contracts fails to complete for all reasons. That includes signed contracts that fail to start too, but it gives you some idea of the issue. Smaller agencies do better than the industry average, and travelers who communicate well with their recruiters also do better (at least that is my belief listening to termination anecdotes).
Cross Country is garbage. They sold my information (as a VMS, I would NEVER work with them directly.) If we would all stop working with them and their parent company (AMN) conditions would improve tremendously. Just my 2 cents.
Cross Country is not related American Mobile in any way. They are both traded in the stock market as separate companies and have been rivals since the mid 1980's. At different times, they had both been the largest agency in the country. Currently American Mobile is the largest agency. They both operate separate vendor managers, and both own a number of different agency brands.
WitchyPooh
11 Posts
I've never worked for CrossCountry. I've heard too many negative things about them over the years so I doubt I ever will. Most recently another traveler that I am currently working with has been with them for several years and was promised a sign on bonus if she renewed her current contract. She did and now they are refusing to pay her. So she will be leaving them after this contract is up. There are some good companies out there. Sounds like it is time for you to to move on and find one