June 22, 2011 - Are you a young nurse looking for a great way to get a boost up the career ladder? Are you an experienced nurse who’s feeling a little restless? Either way, travel nursing could be a terrific option to give your career the proverbial shot in the arm. “You get to broaden your horizons,” said Natalie Conyers, a recruiter with travel nursing company Medical Express.
Hospitals these days often look for what veteran travel nurse recruiter Robyn Rudge calls “super nurses.” They want nurses who have hands-on experience with cutting-edge technology, such as electronic medical records systems, and they want nurses who have logged time in a variety of units. They want nurses who can do it all.
Rudge, a recruiter with American Mobile Healthcare, says that she can help nurses get travel jobs that can help them develop their skills and their confidence. And the travel nursing experience can help nurses develop into exactly what those hospitals are looking for. “It makes them a more well-rounded nurse,” Rudge said. “It makes them more marketable.”
For example, Conyers placed a nurse with an ICU background in a travel position at Washington Hospital Center in Washington, D.C. The hospital provided cross-training for the nurse, giving her valuable experience working in the burn unit. She extended her position and spent about 10 months there. Then she took a position in a burn unit in San Diego with the UC San Diego Health System because she had found such meaning in that experience.
“She would never have that opportunity if they hadn’t trained her,” said Conyers. Labor and delivery nurse Lell Pinkston has logged a number of travel assignments in places like San Antonio, Houston, Los Angeles, and Modesto, California. And those assignments gave her experience with performing tasks like setting up heparin and insulin drips that she hadn’t done very much in her previous job. “That’s definitely one thing I can take away from it,” said Pinkston, who is returning to school to become a family nurse practitioner. “I have learned a lot.”
Travel nursing is also all about exploring choices. Travel nurses who work with American Mobile, Medical Express, or their other affiliates, NursesRx and NurseChoice, can choose their own adventure, so to speak. They can choose to travel to work in hospitals in far-flung places they’ve never visited before, or they can choose positions at hospitals closer to home.
Traveling can help you adjust to other changes in your life, as well, such as a spouse being transferred to a new city. You can test out the job market possibilities in that area by taking a travel position for 13 weeks. Then you might have the option to extend your travel placement, or decide to move on. Either way, you can get a better sense of where you’d like to work in your new community, and have the chance to establish yourself with those facilities so they’ll remember you when permanent positions open up.
“It gives you the chance to try it and see how you like it and get that experience under your belt,” Rudge noted. Travel nursing can also provide the opportunity to work at a top hospital with a national reputation. Rudge has placed travel nurses in positions at some of the most prestigious hospitals and health care organizations in the United States. Her list of clients includes the Cleveland Clinic, Johns Hopkins, and Georgetown. Conyers has also placed nurses at top facilities, including Yale-New Haven Hospital.
Both recruiters note that they work with nurses to help them figure out where they want to go. If a nurse tells Rudge that she’d love the chance to work in a large teaching hospital but she’s not sure she has the experience to land that type of job, Rudge helps her find a travel nursing job that can help her work her way toward that goal. “I always focus on helping you build your résumé, making you a better, more well-rounded nurse,” she said.
Conyers agreed. She talks to her nurses and finds out what they’re looking for, and then she helps them take the right step toward achieving that goal. “They want something new and different and to see what it’s like at other hospitals,” she said. “They want to get experience and see what else is out there.”
