Travel Nursing With No Hospital Experience

[ineedachange1, BSN, RN]

Hi Everyone,

I have over 7 years of nursing experience (LTC/SNF/Clinic/Infusion) but no hospital experience.  Would I be able to work as a travel nurse?  Also, are there agencies that can train me in med surg and place me?

Thanks

[Nunya, BSN]

There's a travel nursing page, you might want to post this there also.

[ineedachange1, BSN, RN]

I tried looking for the travel nurse page and couldn’t find it that is why I posted here 

[Guest 1152923]

Former travel nurse here.  I'm sorry this probably is not what you want to hear, but travel agencies and sponsoring hospitals want travel nurses that are well experienced in their specialties, accommodating, flexible, and able to care for patients almost from day one.  Time is money and money spent orienting/'training' and nurse for a 13 week assignment is not a good return on their investment.

[JBMmom, MSN, NP]

There are some agencies that place travel nurses in long term care facilities, but less of them than acute care.

As morelostthanfound said, travel nurses are used because they can hit the ground running without the invest of time into orientation, I think you're unlikely to come across a travel position in acute care that will provide training. Most want 1-2 years of experience in the area in which you will travel.

[NedRN]

13 hours ago, ineedachange1 said:

Hi Everyone,

I have over 7 years of nursing experience (LTC/SNF/Clinic/Infusion) but no hospital experience.  Would I be able to work as a travel nurse?  Also, are there agencies that can train me in med surg and place me?

Yes, you can work in LTC/SNF/Clinic/Infusion as a traveler.

No, agencies do not train at all. Chances are slim to none that you could get a travel assignment in medsurg where a hospital is willing to do an extended orientation. That would likely be only in the conditions of a long assignment, like a one year contract. That would be similar to getting a permanent job at a hospital willing to train you in a hospital specialty (which usually involves a contract to work there for one to two years) except that the training and support would be far better as staff.

[TheMoonisMyLantern, ADN, LPN, RN]

Every job ad for travelers always requires at least 1-2 years the specialty they're hiring for. The good thing is that no matter what your specialty is, more than likely there's an agency out there that has travel openings for it. LTC has actually been pretty popular for travel contracts since the pandemic so you could always do that if you want to.

If you're mainly wanting to get acute care experience and you're willing to travel, I would start looking to relocate to wherever would hire me. Just in my area I see ads all the time looking for nurses for various acute care positions requiring no experience from hospitals all over the country. I also know that the hospitals around here recruit new grads and those without acute care experience nationally as well. 

Another thought to chew on is Long Term Acute Care. It's becoming a more common type of facility, the patients are incredibly complex requiring extensive nursing care. From what I hear the work is hard, but can be very satisfying.

Good luck to you!

[ActiveRN305, BSN]

LTAC is very hard. As a matter of fact, if you are willing to take a position that would offer you full-time, take it. You will be trained with critical drips, vents, wound care, and believe me, if you can hang with LTAC, you will have plenty, plenty of acute care skills to offer. 

I would say go for it. Then, get some ICU resources, and also why not join a AJN, or any other organization where you will have access to new and updated changes.

Look, even when I worked acute rehab recently, I was taking care of patients to had open heart surgery a week prior OK. Here is the deal, long term care, and acute rehabs are getting sicker and sicker patients, and, the patient to care ratio is crazy, 20:1 or even 30:1.

You can do anything you want, anything. You can BE any nurse you want. Remember that.

[Tired nurse]

For gods sake stay away from long term care they will work you until you drop them toss you in the gutter for a new grad RN