Travel and Floating

[Work2Live]

As a certified orthopedic nurse, I try to ONLY work in orthopedics. I started a 13-week assignment this week at a well-regarded orthopedic hospital. As a traveler, I know that I will have to float, but I do not want to float more than once a week. Otherwise, I wouldn't have accepted the assignment. Any

advice or thoughts on floating when you DIDN'T sign up for a float assignment? Another new traveler proclaimed aloud yesterday that her contract states that she doesn't float. The walls had ears and the manager and director called me today saying that they heard secondhand and thirdhand that I made that remark. I corrected them, but it makes me concerned that I'll be floating the majority of my time. Thanks.

[NedRN]

Advantages and disadvantages to every choice in life.

Medsurg nurses do not get floated to ICU (or ED). If for anything other than an assistive role, sound nursing judgment would be to refuse. Yes, hospitals will often hire up to ICU nurses so they have the flexibility to float down. Of course someone who has only worked in the ICU has no organizational skills to work medsurg or tele.

[emomshart]

I don't post often, but I do want to say this to help. As far at the hospitals are concerned travelers are only there to help the hospital. The hospital absolutely does not care what travelers want. I cannot stress this enough. Travelers are short-term people who pass through with little or no relationship to the management or the hospital. They feel no obligations to you other than what is written in your contract. They will move or float you to wherever it helps them the most. I have experienced this on every contract.

I once signed onto an ortho unit for 13 weeks but floated to every other med-surg type area more often than I worked on the ortho unit I was contracted for. Floating was never mentioned in my contract. So I don't know what recourse one has if floating is prohibited and they try to float you.

My personal experience with floating as a traveler has been positive. I got to try specialties not available at my home hospital like GYN and trauma. I found that I like those areas. I never would have known if not for floating.

Be aware that even full time staff float at most of the hospitals I have worked. I think you, as an ortho nurse, are well prepared for floating. You see so many varied patients, and are accustomed to working very hard, have good organizational skills allowing you to care for 5+ patients. (I feel very bad for the ICU nurses or even PACU nurses I have seen float to med-surg units. Often they are not prepared for our environment and are overwhelmed.)

There are hospitals who hire seasonal nurses. I am doing that right now. However, I do float to their 4 local hospitals whenever they want me to. I have no say in the matter. It is the price I pay for the benefits this seasonal employment offers.

Perhaps floating will be a traveling deal-breaker for you, if you really hate it. I do know that all travelers will float at one time or another. So if it ruins your day/week/assignment, perhaps traveling is not for you.

Every travel assignment has unplanned and/or unwanted adverse events (including pay, housing, travel, floating, coworkers, managers, etc.) We are constantly moving so things will always go wrong in some area. I am the happiest when I have little or no expectations of getting exactly what I want. My secret to happy traveling is to remain positive, embrace flexibility, and enjoy novelty. Good luck to you! Hope this helps.

[Bluebolt]

Floating is the ugly underbelly of the travel nurse world. When you become a travel nurse you'll learn your boundaries very quickly and what things you'll be flexible with and when you draw the line. You aren't a staff nurse protected by management who want you happy and a productive long term member of the team, you're a temp who is disposable.

If you are lucky, have a good personality, work hard and smart, make the other staff like you, show up for work on time and offer to stay over to help out, etc then you might win the love of the admin team and they may show you favor. I've had this happen to me before where they truly want to convince you to stay on a full time staff member so they start giving you a good schedule, you get a good patient assignment, they'll offer free ACLS class or CEU's, they invite you out after work for dinner, but most importantly they will seriously avoid floating you unnecessarily. Don't get me wrong, you are the traveler so if they are forced to float someone, it will still be you.

I worked a job in Atlanta that had 82 ICU beds and 7 different ICU's. The job description was for me to be an ICU Float and to float between all their critical care areas. When I arrived I found out I was hired under the "float pool" dept and my managers were a random group of clerical staff behind cubicles who called you at 5am and told you which floor was shortest and that's where you were to report to. Turns out I worked in a critical care unit less than 50% of my 13 weeks there. I was irate, I wrote letters, made phone calls, had stern words at the high school graduates behind the cubicles (lol), frustrated rants to co-workers, the whole 9 yards. Worst thing was I had signed a 48hr a week contract so I was there all the time, miserable at least half the contract. My biggest complaint and the most valid one was that I went straight to the ICU out of school and never had any experience on other floors. Medical "floor" nursing is a completely different ballgame and it put me far outside my comfort zone and skill set. I knew I wasn't a good nurse for those floor patients and it drove me crazy. I finished it out without walking but it taught me a valuable lesson.

I'm not a nurse, I'm an ICU Nurse and there is a big difference.

I'm starting CRNA school in the fall and won't be doing bedside nursing anymore but I still highly recommend people to go travel. It will teach you what type of nurse you are, how flexible you can be and where your greatest strengths and weaknesses are.

[emomshart]

Well said Bluebolt! My home base is Atlanta, where nurses (staff or agency) have very little say in their environment or work assignments. I work PRN a few weeks a year to keep my status at my Atlanta job. When at home I spend half my time floating. I have worked the same unit for 7 years, but I'm top of the list for floating when I get there.

I really feel for the ICU floaters. For a while they made the mother/baby nurses float to med/surg units and like half of them quit. They don't do that anymore. They said "a nurse is a nurse" and "We don't need you if you can't be flexible." It is strange because during that same period, there were articles in the local papers that we were short 7000 nurses in the Greater Atlanta area. That is the mentality of the people running hospitals today. It is very sad. When I find a good, caring hospital that treats nurses well, I usually extend my contract or return to that hospital at another time. It is getting harder and harder to find hospitals that value nurses. But I still love being a nurse, more so now that I travel.