shailee

Thank you so much for your comments. Clarification: The hospital has 300 beds, and the er/urgent care unit has 10 er beds. The hospital works in conjunction with wake med, a very large teaching hospital within 5 minutes away. Icu patient's are sent there, and you're right. The hospital is 4 months old, and at a meeting yesterday, we were told that an icu is in the future plans.

OK. Thank you.

Hello Everyone: After working 2 years as a Homecare Nurse (could not get hired into hospital as a new grad) I finally relocated and acquired an ICU position (although my hearts desire was to be an ER nurse) I was in ICU for 8 months and finally got hired for an ER position at a new State Hospital. The Hospital has over 300 beds. It has an OR (not heavily invasive, but that is to change as more personnel is hired and equipment is brought in), telemetry unit, med-surge units, dialysis, ER, etc. During the first week of orientation we were informed that the State says that we now have to call ourselved an Urgent Care unit, because we do not have an ICU. Up to now the ER has functioned as a limited ICU. My problems is now as such: am I an ER nurse as stated on my letter of acceptance or am I now an urgent care nurse? (my duties have not changed, just the dept. name) and will I still be able to eventually become certified as an ER nurse? I thought I was finally there:cry:

It depends on what type of Correction Institution you are employed by. My previous experience was 8 months in an ICU position. I just started at a Hospital (300 beds) with 120 being mental health. This is in NC. I will be working in the ER department of the hospital. The hospital also has telemetry, med-surge units, an OR. The Correction infirmaries that are in each prison may not be so vast. My hospital in on the prison grounds, but is a seperate 5 floor building. My hospitals offers acute care to prisoners over the entire state of NC. Like you, my interest is in ER. After you finish your 12 month stint, try looking into large Correction State and Federal Hospitals (like the one in Butner NC) that operates as full hospitals with JAHCO accredidation. Hopes this helps

Thank you guys. I did just that and they were both appreciative. I got my first travel assignment. I'm so excited. The 2nd recruiter was so nice. She said well why don't we work on getting your license for California, so by the time you finish this assignment you will be ready to travel with us. She immediately assigned me to a recruiter in the company working in my specialty.

Thank you for your responses

:confused:I just recently found out that I qualified requirement wise to work with travel agency. I had one assignment that I was going to take but it was cancelled. Since then I've signed up with another agency. The recruiters for both agencies are wonderful and they both are trying very hard to help me. When it comes to travel nurse etiquette should I inform both recruiters that I'm working with someone else at the same time. Ideally I would like to work for both companies so I don't want to do anything that would jeopardize the relationship with either one. Especially since I've been told that it's better to work for two. Would this be a case of don't ask and don't tell?

That 's is true. I have several friends who are travel nurses here in NY. I do know that one who worked for one company had $2,000 for her rent. I don't know if this is the standard or not. The assignments can be anywhere from 3 months to 1 year and they can be renewed. There is also a posting on allnurses.com dated March 19, 2008 from Samyaira inviting anyone to pm him/her for specific amounts for housing stipends in NY. Hope this helps.