question re: nurses doing vaginal/cervical exams

[ljb]

Hello all,

I'm an L&D nurse looking to get into travel nursing, but have run into some problems in regards to my experience. I wondered what any of you might be able to offer in terms of advice or your personal experience, especially anyone who has been in my particular position.

I have 18 months of L&D experience, just shy of 4 years total nursing experience (my first job was in a SICU--good experience, but not for me). I work at HUP in Philadelphia, a large teaching facility. The nurses here (except for a handful, cross trained for our triage area), DO NOT do cervical exams. My first choice of location to move to has been San Francisco. Large teaching facilities there, as I'm told, do not want to hire first time travelers. So I've expanded my search to outlying areas, other small towns. This is where I've discovered (as many are community hospitals), that all the nurses do cervical exams (and place FSEs and IUPCs), leaving me unqualified!

So basically I'm stuck with the catch-22 situation of: can't get a job at a large teaching facility in the city (as a first timer), but can't get a job at a smaller or community hospital b/c of my sheltered existence at a large teaching facility! It's kind of funny really.

Is my hospital as outside of the norm as it seems in that we (the RNs) don't do vag exams? (or place internal monitoring instruments)

Just wondering if any of you has had this same combination of situations, and if they were ever successful in finding a travel job?

I realize this may be more of a "travel nursing forum" question (and I did post there as well), but I wanted insight from L&D nurses in general as to where my facility stood on the spectrum.

Thanks for any input!

[SmilingBluEyes]

You are right to be leery of learning these skills in a traveling capacity. I would not want to be doing these things in that manner, either. I would want a good period of orientation and practice at these skills before being asked to perform them on my own. And if traveling, I would tell that unit you are not comfortable doing these things there as this is not what you have done in the past. Before considering traveling where nurses do these things all the time, you should want to orient and practice these skills first. Many places won't want to hire on L/D nurses who are not, in particular, very experienced in SVE's, especially. Internal monitors, well, that is a different story. Not all nurses are in places where they CAN/ are allowed to place them or where the practioners use them at all. But SVEs are required pretty much everywhere except in, like I said, the largest teaching hospitals where residents do this themselves.

Good luck to you.

[CMCRN]

I work in San Francisco in a large L&D, we do vag exams and place FSE but not IUPC. Why not just apply to work in SF rather than as a travel assignment? Is there advantage to travel assignment? We have had 3 or 4 travelers over the years and they all ended up working for us permanently