perfexion

It is possible but difficult. I tried to work in Nevada and New York last summer, but coordinating the schedules along with flights became a hassle. I was late a bunch of times, a missed a few flights and had to call in a few times, and also I flew across the country just to be cancelled a few times. It all became too much. I actually ended up losing one of the jobs for excessive call ins. I'll never do that again. Now I work in California and Nevada. It's a 4 hour drive which is still a bit much but it's easier than a flight. The only downfall is that I somehow put myself on to work 15 days in a row between the two jobs. It's only temporary though. But I know nurses who do that full time!

Im going against the grain here. I think it's common sense that orientation didn't count on your Tuesdays off. Ive been to some hospitals that cancel you if you're late to orientation. Like others said, it's usually non-negotiable. It's a JCAHO requirement that we have to sit through some of the crap. If any part of hospital orientation was optional, nobody would show up. I think you should've made some arrangement to miss clinical that one day. There has to be some kind of exception to missing clinical. What if you had jury duty? They wouldn't let you miss Tuesdays. I know that's not what you wanted to hear though.

I started traveling right before I found out I was 5 weeks pregnant with my third baby. I did 3 back to back assignments, and then went out on leave at 7 months. I had private short term disability insurance though and my contracts were at crisis rates so i could afford to stay out a while. But I don't know if I would've started traveling if I knew I was already pregnant. But then again I had been putting it off for so long. There's always going to be something stopping you from traveling. The time will never be right. A part of me says just take the plunge. Things have a way of working themselves out. Just make sure you have some money in the bank before your first assignment. I did tons of OT before I quit my staff job. P.S. Talk to the STD company if you have it through your job. Some policies are portable and you can take them with you when you leave. You can pay directly through bank draft.

I think it depends on WHAT you're asking. If you're asking how to set up a rapid transfuser, that's a legitimate question because not every hospital even has that piece of equipment. If you're asking how many respirations is too many or how to take a manual blood pressure or what the side effects to a medication are, then it doesn't matter how you ask, someone is going to think you don't know what you're doing because that's basic nursing stuff. Just remember, some simple things can be googled.

The thing about switching specialties is, even if you find one hospital to cross train you, you still need the same 2 years of experience to travel in your new specialty. The next hospital you go to might not be cool with only 13 weeks experience in ICU. Im looking to switch to OR myself. Im L&D. I can't even find a staff hospital to take me in the OR. Everyone wants a year or 2 of experience. I have to take an L&D staff job and wait around for an internal transfer. So switching specialties in general isn't that easy, let alone as a traveler.

Nobody is blaming the nurse for anything. But I think if there is a cultural explanation for certain behavior, maybe having a nurse of that same culture would help. Think about what you just said: you'd assume the patient was emotionally unbalanced. What if they weren't? What if they were just taught to exaggerate pain response for whatever reason. You are just like the nurses im talking about. You think the patient's cultural nuances makes them crazy. That's exactly the lack of cultural competence that im referring to.

Staffing isn't to blame for everything. But I agree that it's a compassion problem. Some patients are screaming in pain when you empty their Foley. I don't know the specifics of how pain is regarded in that culture, but I know that for the most part, it seems that a lot of them have low pain thresholds. I can see how that would get old to nurses who constantly work with that population. I don't think fixing staff ratios would solve that. You'd just have more nurses on the floor rolling their eyes behind the patients backs and ignoring their cries for medication.

I'd like feedback from current nurses only, please no students. Do you think that the cultural make up of the nurse population at your hospital should match that of the patients? In other words, if you work with a predominantly Hispanic population, should the majority of the nurses in that hospital be Hispanic? Do you think having the majority of nurses from a different cultural background than the patients poses a problem with cultural competence? Personally I do. I work at a hospital now with a large Bangladeshi population but very few, if any, Bangladeshi nurses. The nurses are very ignorant of that culture, particularly their views on pain, despite numerous annual in-services on cultural competence. There is just no getting through to the nurses. They just think those patients can't handle pain, and they are treated as drug seekers, but it's a cultural thing. Do you think having more Bangladeshi nurses would solve that particular problem?

I've been traveling for 4 years now and I honestly stopped researching hospitals long time ago. Whatever portrait of the hospital that will be painted through the eyes and experiences of others almost never matches my own experiences. I've loved hospitals with terrible reviews, and I've hated hospitals where some travelers extend for years. Im at a hospital right now where the average traveler extends at least 3 times (though there are travelers that have been here since 2015) and I absolutely hate it here! Im counting down the shifts and I can't wait to high-tail it out of here in a month. Plus im labor and delivery and most of the reviews of my current hospital are ER or med surgery so that tells me absolutely nothing. I've learned to not put too much into reviews and to just walk in blind. If I like the unit, good, that's great! If I don't, whatever, it's only 3 months. I can do anything for 3 months.

They didn't initially tell me why they wanted everything redone, Kooky. They just told me to redo everything and after going back and forth with them for several weeks, they finally told me the reason was that they wanted everything on their letterhead. But why wouldn't I question it? Everything I provided was current. But initially they just told me to get it done and they gave me a deadline.

There are thousands of ugly nurses out there. That doesn't stop them from doing what they do.

Also, if you don't mind me asking, what other bills do you have that you wouldn't be able to pay if you're homeless and carless? Those are usually the biggest bills. Student loans can be deferred if you're experiencing a hardship.

Also, if you don't mind me asking, what other bills do you have that you wouldn't be able to pay if you're homeless and careless? Those are usually the biggest bills. Student loans can be deferred if you're experiencing a hardship.

Do you have a Florida license and a job lined up down there? If I were you I'd stay, take company housing and save some money. No point being homeless and unemployed.

NYU, Mt Sinai and Columbia Presbyterian require BSNs for everyone, even travelers. They are the big dogs in NYC. City hospitals do not care. Montefiore in the Bronx hires ADNs, and independent hospitals each have their own rules. I have worked at Maimonides in Brooklyn with an ADN. But this whole BSN requirement is recent as of last year. I am originally from NYC. My staff hospital was Beth Israel. I went to the Beth Israel School of Nursing for my ADN. They NOW require a BSN for everyone, even travelers, even though they sent a bunch of ADN nurses out there. I wouldn't bank on a NYC hospital with an ADN, at least not q Manhattan hospital. Maybe look at the outer boroughs or upstate.

You might get steady work if you're compact, but you probably won't get those reeeeeeally high paying NICU assignments. Nobody is paying top dollar, $3000+ a week for level II. At some point your lack of experience in level III will be hindrance and stop you from getting a job you really want. I recommend getting as much exprerience as possible before you start traveling. Maybe find a per diem job in a level III or a level IV facility. Volunteer to take the sickest babies. Learn about ECMO and head cooling. Don't be afraid of these things. Knowing that stuff will get you steady high paying jobs.

I agree Jive, which is why I immediately started looking for a new contract. I figured I wouldn't even be allowed to start. The problem with my paperwork was that they wanted it on their own letterhead. That's it. That's why I absolutely refused to redo it. The documents I gave them were current. I just did everything in January of this year. I wasn't going to go back to the doctor to redo everything on a different piece of paper. But I guess the hospital didn't care that much.

I always thought one way or another, everything comes from your pay package. There is no free money. The agency doesn't pay you out of their own pocket. There is one pay package that the hospital pays, and it is divided up to cover your pay, housing, travel and other reimbursements. And whatever is left over usually goes towards perks like swag, bonuses or a "tip" for your recruiter. Only, we have no control over where the money goes or how much is allotted to what area. That's what was explained to me by a travel nurse i know who started her own agency. I don't know if that's just her agency or if it's the business model of every agency.

Someone told me that when i was pregnant. That same person told me not to touch oxytocin for the same reason. I don't know if it was an anecdotal precaution or if there is actually some evidence supporting that, but at the time I didn't care because my coworkers were all volunteering to place my cytotecs so I wasn't going to complain. Now that I'm no longer pregnant I'm curious if there was some truth to that.

I meet a lot of nurses who claim they get paid more as staff nurses than travel nurses, but I don't believe them because they don't work in Northern California. Some nurses misunderstand travel nurse pay and THINK they will be short changed if they travel. For instance I met an older nurse a few years ago with about 40 years experience who showed me her paycheck, which was about $3200, and said, "Where would I go that I'd be making more than this? Travel nurse contracts pay about half that!" So I had to correct her and tell her that, yes, the average travel nurse contract pays somewhere between $1600 and $2400 PER WEEK! Her paycheck was biweekly. So yes, I only made a measily $1800 per check, but I get that check every week, so i essence, she would get paid slightly more to travel, with the added bonus of traveling the country. After that she asked for my recruiter's number and she's been traveling ever since. However, this whole conversation would've gone differently if that nurse was in Northern California. I believe they probably make more than $3600 every two weeks there!

I had a rough start to my current contract. The actual unit itself is fine, but before I even started I had a bunch of issues with compliance. I handed in my current medical documents but they were all rejected. I was told that I had to redo everything from titres to physicals to vaccines (and pay for them myself) and I stubbornly, out of principle, refused to resubmit them. The compliance dept has been threatening me with cancellation ever since I stepped foot on the plane. I'm now going on my third week of this assignment and I still refuse to submit these documents, and I am absolutely not going to redo that stuff. Since I was sure they were going to cancel me, I submitted myself for another assignment and I was offered another position in another city that starts in two weeks. I haven't signed the contract yet because I was expecting to get cancelled by now. I received one final "warning" email yesterday from my agency but I haven't heard from them today. This is the fourth final warning email they have sent me. So now I'm worried because I don't think they are going to cancel me and I already have a new assignment lined up. I don't know what to do. I know I messed up and I know what I did was wrong, but I still need advice. Help!

You can forget about NYC if you don't have a BSN. Just cross it completely off of your list. California doesn't care too much about BSNs for travelers. I am an ADN and I traveled in California for 1.5 years and only one hospital even asked if I had a BSN. That hospital was about to gain Magnet status. It didn't stop me from getting the job though. I just had a dozen people asking me if I was going to back to school every week for 13 weeks. I don't know about Chicago. That being said I have absolutely no plans t get my BSN and I have been traveling for almost 5 years now. Your biggest issue, like someone said is getting a California license. That took my 9 months!

I'm in the same boat. I'm from NY too. I'm 35 and I still don't have my license. I had to bring my hubs to SoCal with me because my entire paycheck was going to Uber. Usually I just get housing near the hospital and eat whatever is nearby. But San Francisco is a commuters dream. So is DC and Chicago.

I thought they settled already.

Have you ever noticed that if a waiter or Walmart employee or grocery store clerk complains about their job, people take their side and agree that all their customers are jerks, but if a nurse (or a teacher, or a dentist or any professional really) complain about their job, people say they shouldn't be in their profession?