dingoRN

Hi David! I worked at Banner University Medical Center - Tucson before it was bought out by the Banner system - when it was 'University of Arizona Medical Center' (UAMC). UAMC was the most wonderful hospital with great ICUs to work in. The best floor with the greatest people to work with was the MICU. Banner has taken its toll on the hospital and from what I hear, it's definitely not the same hospital anymore, but still the best hospital in Tucson - but that isn't really saying much either. Anyway, I do know that the Director of all 3 of the ICUs is HUGE on hiring new grads, so you may want to look into seeking an ICU job there. Good Luck!

I am looking into travel nursing as well because I have 3 friends that are doing it. They are all in agreement about having at least 3 years of experience, even though most companies require only 1 year of experience. They work Med/Surg and that encompasses quite a large area of expertise. 2 of my 3 friends have had assignments where they have floated off their assigned unit almost half of the time to patient populations they were not very familiar with, so it is a good idea to get a lot of experience. They all love travel nursing and are not looking to get rich, but a lot of the good paying jobs are in Oregon/California/New York. It really all depends on your recruiter. One of my friends had to leave an agency that the other friend was at because her recruiter sucked, but the other friend's recruiter was awesome. So it is a crap shoot for which agency is really the best. One friend wants to do travel nursing for another 5-6 years, but the other two just want to do it for another year. They all basically said that travel nursing is like being the new kid with every contract and this can be either exciting or terrifying depending on the nurses attitude. A good idea of a gauge of pay is to check out a few different agencies to see what pay packages are like for one specific area (like Northern California or a specific city) and then go from there. Sometimes it can be a huge difference from one company to the next.

A friend of mine inquired about them and did like that the company is small and everything is done through the recruiter, but the pay was laughable (hilarious, actually) - no housing, travel or license reimbursement. I think medical was included, but the weekly take home pay was lower than other agencies who provided free housing and travel reimbursement.