Trauma Med/Surg - what else do I need to know to travel?

[AddyRN07]

I graduated a year and a half ago and began my career at a prominent hospital in the DFW area on the Trauma Med/Surg floor. I want to start traveling at the end of my contract with this hospital (which is another year and a half away). Is 3 years experience with Trauma Med/Surg enough? Should I consider doing something else for awhile, like ICU, ER, or L&D? I particularly like the Trauma floor though.

When I first interviewed, my manager made the statement "After working a year on this floor, you will be able to go anywhere." Now, I suppose most floors tell you that. Right? This floor is however, a very fast paced floor. We get our patients either straight from the ER or from ICU. Of course, they have had some kind of 'trauma' such as a gunshot wound, stabbings, a closed head injury. We deal with trachs, chest tubes, all kinds of drains, rectal tubes, ng tubes ect. We do get an occassional lap appy or lap chole too.

Traveling, I'd like to stay in the Med/Surg arena. But then that lil voice in my head says....um, but you don't know anything about a respiratory patient, or a colon-rectal patient. I don't know a thing about telemetry. If one of our patients has to be on tele, they are on the tele floor, not the trauma floor! So there in lies my concerns. Will 3 years of Trauma Med/Surg be enough experience to take me out on other Med/Surg assignments?

I'd like to know what kinds of experiences you all had before starting your traveling career and how did you handle situations you weren't too sure about when you traveled?

Is 3 years of Trauma Med/Surg alone enough experience??????

[wanderlust99]

I think it's enough. I wouldn't work anywhere else, I would just jump into the traveling:) You will learn as you go.

And as far as tele goes, you can easily learn that if you want to increase your job opportunities.

I don't work on a med/surg floor, but I went from working straight neuro to traveling & taking care of all sorts of different types of pts. I have learned a lot. But you have your basic nursing knowledge & that is all you really need.

Just keep interviewing with different hospitals once you get your recruiter and wait until you find the perfect job at a great hospital that will fit with your experience.

[Spiderella]

Why don't you just take an EKG course at your job, or switch to the tele trauma floor? That way you can round off your experience but still stay in your field.

[OkieICU_RN]

Surely your trauma patients sometime develop respiratory distress and you handle that, right? You can probably handle any other respiratory patient too.

You can take a basic dysrhythmias class where you are (for free most likely). Then, if you could maybe pick up a PRN shift once every 2-3 weeks on one of the tele floors you would begin to feel comfortable with it. There's probably a fair number of respiratory patients on those floors as well.

It's always good to broaden your education and abilities. It can only make you more marketable and make it easier to find a position where you want to be later on. Consider doing agency work later too, even if it's just once a month. It will make the transition to traveling easier.