I am in constant communication with any nurse who is a part of my team. The moment I hear the facility has pushed the nurse outside of their agreed upon radius, I would ask the nurse if they were comfortable with our team (recruiter & account manager) to reach out to the facility to address and work on preventing it from happening again. Hopefully these steps would have been able to prevent the 2 other floating requests that were also outside of the agreed radius. I understand the nurse is being flexible and trying to be helpful, but my job as a recruiter is to protect our nurses. If they are not comfortable with a situation, I want to make sure we are working to fix it right away. Also in regards to the situation mentioned above; depending on how comfortable the nurse is with the facility, I would also brainstorm ideas with the nurse to see if they would like to reiterate the 10 mile radius rule next time they tried to float her, just to put that bug in their ear too. It really is handled on a case-by-case situation, but at the end of the day my job as a recruiter is to be another voice for our nurses!
Thankfully in this type of situation any nurse who works with me will have my direct cell phone number. No need for them to call a hotline after hours. They can always get a hold of me directly and I can help advise or be in contact with our clinical liaison to help with the above concern. With this specific situation it can go two ways. I would first have the nurse inquire exactly what are their expectations of her in the NICU; as this unit is beyond her competency level. The unit may only be needing her to do a task that she would be fully comfortable and knowledgeable of doing. If the nurse finds that is the case then wonderful! However, sometimes this is not the case. If this situation happened then we would have her reiterate to the charge/manager that she is not comfortable floating to the NICU and express her reasons as to why. I would also offer to speak to whomever is trying to float her to the NICU and reiterate how the nurse is not comfortable working outside of her scope. Recruiters should be the advocates for their nurses and need to protect not only the nurse but also their license.
I would call her immediately and together we would come up with a plan-of-action. My ideal plan-of-action would be to reach out to the complex and request an immediate change of unit. We would also request this be done right away and have the nurse be able to do a walk-thru before moving her items into the new unit. If no other available units, I would discuss with the nurse options to correct the situation. That would include, the complex fixing the issues while we find a hotel in the meantime, or getting out of the lease and our housing department finds new, clean, and comfortable options!
I would immediately get with the nurse and see what she would ideally prefer to do. Does she want to just take the 2 weeks off to recover or would she prefer to try and find another assignment while she is recovering. I would ask the nurse stay in full communication with the hospital in regards to what is going on. Our account manager for the facility would also be doing this on their end as well. If the nurse feels they would prefer to leave the assignment, we would work with the facility and the nurses doctors notes in getting them to release her from her contract without penalty. As this is out of the nurses control. If the nurse is wanting to try to continue after the 2 weeks off we would make sure we are still communicating with the hospital to make sure they understand the importance of the 2 weeks for recover as well as keeping them updated if this were to happen again. However, in this type of health situation, it really is the nurses decision. We (trustaff) are there to support them and try to figure out the best way to go about the situation.
Thankfully this type of situation should not happen with trustaff. Once a nurse has accepted a position, we work directly with the hospital and their compliance team to get the drug screen, medical, paperwork, and any needed testing completed. However if there was a possible glitch in the offer and the position no longer exist we would know at the time of compliance, as we cannot start compliance without proper confirmation from the facility. With these procedures in place with the facility it should prevent a nurse from ever leaving their house and driving to an assignment to find they do not have one. However, let’s say this situation from the question did happen. I would get with all of our accounts that we work with in the Las Vegas and surrounding areas and see if there is a job with a fast turnaround that was can get nurse Roulette in with.
The two things I would like travel nurses to know about being a great traveling nurse or what could make our job easier is simply communication and also to try and go into every situation being open minded. Communication is so crucial and important. If there is a concern or an issue I want to know about it right away. I always tell my nurses we are a team, we are a family. So I want them to feel comfortable expressing any need they have. This will allow for a smoother assignment and also helps us grow trust with each other. It is so important to have that recruiter/traveler trust Then secondly about being open-minded. It can all be very stressful relocating, starting at a new hospital, compliance, meeting new people, etc. So going into a situation being open minded without setting specific expectations can allow you to enjoy your entire experience and adapt.