Travel nursing after 8 months of licensed experience

[guest1107684]

I have read many posts about people who started their travel nursing career after less than a year of nursing experience. I am very interested in what these people have to say about the rest of their travel nursing career after making this decision.

Will staring travel nursing after 8 months of working in the hospital put me at a disadvantage later on when I am trying secure good contracts with reputable agencies?

How will it look on my resume?

Will completion of several travel contracts make me more marketable in the future?

I assume at this stage I will only be able to get a contract with a community hospital. Is working for a bigger hospital system a possibility in the future after completion of several assignments and having good references to back up my experience?

[RN/WI, ADN, BSN, MSN, RN, APRN]

Are you talking about travel with only 8 months of total RN experience? Or do you mean 8 months as a hospital RN with previous experiences as an RN in clinic or outside a hospital? 

I think most reputable agencies would want proof of 2 years hospital experience. I myself would not go for a travel assignment with only 8 months acute care hospital RN experience, even if some agency would pick me up. Just my honest opinion speaking as a past travel nurse.

Good luck?

[NedRN]

I can tell you that the many nurses who get bounced from their first (and last) travel job are not going to post here. Just too embarrassing and humiliating. This is not uncommon in the best of times.

There are not many posts about travelers successfully traveling with less than one year experience, much less two. I've been here and other major travel nurse sites for twenty years and I've not seen such stories. Possible? Aside from blatant lies or misinformation, absolutely. Someone with ten years of related clinical experience such as LVN. Nursing home travel. Maybe an easy travel-friendly medsurg assignment to start. There are even "travel" assignments for new grads with a 2 year contract - they do not pay well though.

Besides basic clinical competence, you don't want to travel with such limited experience even if it was possible. You don't want to be struggling clinically along with the rest of the burden placed on travelers, new EMR, very limited orientation, different patient population, and different hospital culture and patient flow.

As far as your resume goes, it will look bad without a two year staff job heading on your work history. Would you be interested as a manager to make a permanent hire with such a person? Yes, successfully completed travel assignments do make you much more valuable as an experienced and proven traveler, with more pay and choice. But if you don't have the experience going in, and fail on your first travel assignment, start looking for work in a medical office or nursing home. Or give phlebotomy a try. Yup, that is the risk you might be taking here with your career.