Highway Hypodermics

Kayla Cash

Question 1:

In a large metropolitan area, Nurse Floating Flo contracts to float between three hospitals within a 10 mile radius of her housing. Starting in the 6th week, the company ask her to float to a hospital 15 miles away, the 7th week she goes to one on the other side of the city, that is 30 miles away, plus one that is 17 miles away. The nurse is willing to take the first few, but after the behavior continues, she has had enough and voices this to her recruiter.

Answer 1:

I'm always going to advocate for the nurses I work with. If the agreement was to go 10 miles that's what it should be and I would go to bat for her. I would contact the hospital and ask about the recent changes and work with them to resolve the issue.

Question 2:

Baby Nurse Betty is a skilled labor and delivery nurse, who also can float to post-pardum care after the delivery as well as the well-newborn nursery. At 7:30pm, the staffing company hotline gets a call stating that they want her to float to the NICU, which is beyond her competency level. What is your company’s response?

Answer 2:

I would never advise a nurse to float outside of their competency level (unless the willingness to train is there from the facility and the nurse agrees to it) anything else is putting them at risk.

Question 3:

Nurse Roach is all excited about her first travel nursing assignment. She drives 750 miles to her new assignment housing. After getting the keys from management, she opens the door and three cockroaches scurry across the floor. After further investigation, she also finds a ring of mold in the shower. She can’t stand it and immediately texts you with pictures. How do you respond?

Answer 3:

Get her out of their ASAP!!! Then find her new housing right away.

Question 4:

You have worked with Nurse Asthmatic for 3 years now and she has done a great job for you, when she takes an assignment in Southeast Colorado. She envisions magic mountains that reach to the sky, only to find that she has landed in wheat country. Not wanting to cause problems she continues to work and everything is fine, until harvest. She has an asthma attack, ends up in the hospital, and is told that she is going to miss at least 2 weeks of work related to asthma induced pneumonia. How do you work things out?

Answer 4:

I'm pretty through with the nurses I work with to insure I'm helping them achieve their goals of travel. If she was looking for a mountainous view I would have warned her that she wouldn't be getting that in SE Colorado and that the job she was looking at was in the middle of a bunch of farms which would have hopefully prevented this whole debacle. However, in the spirit of playing along - I would put the nurses safety first and let the hospital know what was going on to work at getting them to release her from the contract so she can recover and find the mountainous view she was looking for in the first place.

Question 5:

You have worked hard to find Nurse Roulette a job in Las Vegas. You send the nurse a contract that she readily accepts, signs, and sends back. The next morning the bags are packed and Nurse Roulette is on the way to the assignment of her dreams. At 0800 she is out the door and to the hospital. Checking in with HR, they inform her that there is no contract between the hospital and the company, related to the fact that it has not been approved by HR. About the same time, the recruiting manager comes to you and tells you not to send Nurse Roulette on the assignment. This shouldn’t have happened, but unfortunately it does happen. What do you do?

Answer 5:

Ugh, this is every nurse and recruiters nightmare. In this case all you can do is be honest and communicate the whole way through. I would fight like heck and do everything I could to still make the assignment of her dreams happen while working on a backup plan in the meantime to insure not to leave her without a job. Obviously we want plan A to workout , but we always want to have a plan B, C, D in progress in situations like this for backup.

Question 6:

What would you like travel nurses to know about being a great traveling nurse and making your job easier?

Answer 6:

Communication is KEY and fully a two way street. A good tip I've realized has helped out travelers and future travelers over the years is to start getting your resume, references, certs and immunization records ready to go and keeping them on file to pull up at any point. When the assignment of your dreams comes up we don't want to be late to the game and miss out on that opportunity! This both makes the process easier on both of us and gives us a much better chance of getting the application to that dream job quickly which gives us a better shot!

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