Should contract nursing be a one way street?

[kabrn05]

I've been traveling for 2 1/2 years. I was recently at a hospital where I had a really bad experience. The people were rude and unaccepting of travelers. The travelers were not involved in any inservices on new equipment or just things that were happening on the floor. I was floated a lot to a tele unit that was using med surg nurses with no tele experience to staff their floor all the time. It was very disorganized and unsafe. Almost all the staff nurses were new nurses and they had new nurses training new nurses. I had never cancelled a contract before but I felt like my license was on the line.

I feel like hospitals give you bad assignments and don't really give you that right to refuse. I just recieved a lecture from an agency that I recently signed on with about cancelling contracts. He said if it ever happened again hospitals in this area won't have anything to do with me. I have a really good resume and have never had a problem at a hospital before. I feel like nobody sticks up for the nurses. I am very disappointed in most all the hospital systems. I don't feel like we are able to do our job safely. I feel like the stress of nursing is tremendous. Hospitals are allowed to cancel and fire us, and tell us not to return. But, if we find our situation unsafe, then we are not allowed any say in the situation and are penalized or threatened if we decide not to wager our licenses and careers on whether or not their refusal to manage their facility will come back to bite us.

It is very common for people to feel that the healthcare industry doesn't care about the patients anymore. Has anybody else had similar experiences that lead you to believe they don't care about their employees either?