To travel or not to travel that is the question

[mountsrcalling]

Hi there! I am a 29 yr old working in a SICU. I started in June of 16' so I have about eight months of experience at this point. I feel slightly more comfortable than a month or two ago, but still get those moments of, "What am I doing?" We see sepsis, a little neuro (fresh crain's w/EVD's, GI surgeries gone bad, DKA, post codes, Resp failures/excaberations, we are kind of a overflow catch all most of the time.

My wife expressed an interest for me to possibly doing travel nursing, which I think would be awesome. I do understand traveling at this very point would be out of the question because of my experience. I guess that would be my biggest point of weakness. Just feeling unprepared. I work at large learning hospital that has a couple nursing schools and a medical school attached to it, so I think I might be "babied" at times. So the idea of going to a another ICU is a little intimidating.

So, after about two years of experience should I look for ICU assignments or something less stressful for traveling? Any other input/fyi about travel nursing is welcomed too. Of course I have a million other questions but I know how to search the boards. Thanks!

[NedRN]

You should start to feel pretty comfortable after two years. Some nurses require even more. Once you feel comfortable with your clinical skills, you can consider the added challenge of travel. For myself before I started to travel (after almost three years - including adding a super specialty), I wanted to validate that my skills translated outside of the only hospital I'd ever worked for and did several per diem assignments to check it out (did fine).

Travel is guaranteed to be more stressful than a staff job simply based on learning new patient populations and local culture, and new computer programs for charting, and ordering, and completely different patient flow, acuities, and patient load. So your clinical skills should be solid so you aren't stressed about that on top of all these new stressors.

When you first start to travel, you really want to make sure your first couple of assignments are well within your comfort zone, or even "easy". A good recruiter will help you find appropriate assignments (forget about money or location for your first couple assignments) on traveler friendly units, and you can question the interviewing hospital manager closely about patient population, acuity, and load before accepting any assignment. Any red flags, forget that assignment. You will also have to find honest recruiters and managers. Even a manager will lie about working conditions to fill their needs on a difficult assignment that many travelers turn down.

[mountsrcalling]

Thank you so much for your insight!! I see how easy it can be to get all wrapped up in the money and exotic locations, but I have to more honest with myself and become a better nurse first.