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Thats good to hear that there are still jobs out there to be had. I just dont think i would be comfortable traveling to ICU positions without experience.

Hi all, I have a bit of a dilemma and i would like everyones opinion. I have been a med surg nurse for about 3.5 years now with the last 1.5 on a more acute and specific trauma/surgical/oncology at a level 1 trauma hospital. I plan on traveling but i wanted to get all my ducks in a row first and give me the best chance possible since i hear travel nursing is a bit slow right now. I plan on traveling in about 1.5 years from now, reason being im starting my RN to BSN this summer. I expect that to make me more desirable when interviewing. My main dilemma is whether i should get ICU experience or not. I have always wanted to end up in ICU or ED in the end. So in short im thinking of one of the two options below. 1) Go into ICU for 1.5 years while i finish my BSN degree making my experience 3.5 years in medsurg and 1.5 in ICU. 2) Stay in medsurg and get a total of 5 years experience before i start traveling. Our hospital will also be moving in june and my med surg floor with start using tele giving me added experience there. I would prefer option 1 but i am worried about hospitals saying, "oh you only have 1.5 years of ICU" and be stuck traveling for medsurg in both both options anyways but only have 3.5 yrs experience with option 2 leaving me less desirable to hire. Thanks for listening and any advise you can give.

Hi there. I am on my second year as a nurse and have been appying to hospitals in denver for about a year now. It seems I only started to get call backs for hospitals once i approached my 2 year anniversary. Now I have 2 interviews next week. The whole city is full on beautiful hospitals, much nice than here in Los Angeles. Good luck finding a job though. Hope you have better luck then ive had up until now. Btw each hospital ive talked to say that with my experience i would get $25 (guess that means starting is 23?) but with night differential it will be between $30-32. It is still a pay cut from my current 38.66 but not too bad.

Wow this is depressing because I have been planning on moving to Colorado from California in the coming months and was thinking about going with a Travel company. I only have about 1.5 years experience too. =/

I live in california and want to travel to Colorado. I know they start at about 23/hr. Would a travel nurse make more then that or do they just pay what the hospital pays?