Travel nursing to Chicago

[ICUgirl]

I'm going to be travel nursing to chicago starting in may, so I'm looking into companies up there. This will be my first assignment. Right now I'm interested in onward healthcare, nightingale nursing has contacted me. Anyone have any recommendations for companies and/or hospitals? Also, any tips going into a first assignment?

[cougarnurse]

As for the city, Rush is good; so is Loyola. However, not sure if they use travel nurses. What specialty are you looking at?

[ICUgirl]

I'll be working in ICU.

[Dandle]

I've been traveling with Onward for a year now, have had no problems and would highly recommend them.

[ChicagoRNICU]

About 6 months ago I started looking for a travel nursing job in Chicago. I signed up with 4 different travel nursing agencies and none of them were able to find me an contract in Chicago. Sure they had stories about available ICU contracts in Chicago but I never got one. I have 8 years of critical care experience and Ive been doing travel nursing for the last 3 years strait. I dont want to toot my horn or anything but I ussually dont have a problem finding an ICU assignment.

I really wanted to move to Chicago so i even started to call some of the local hospitals in Chicago and try to talk about a registry nursing job. I ended up calling a few of the local nursing agencies. I found out that most of the Chicago area hospitals dont use the travel nursing agencies. The local nursing agencies in Chicago are normally able to fill the local contract nursing jobs in Chicago area hospitals.

I signed up with a local nursing agency and I could tell right away that I signed up with the wrong agency. They only had contracts with a few of the local hospitals and didnt have much work available. I ended up doing some more research and found a big local nursing agency called Healthcare Personnel Inc. When I registered with them they gave me a list of about 50 of the local hospitals that they could send me into. If you want to find thier contact info all you have to do is google thier name and you will find them Chicago Hospital Jobs - Nursing Jobs Chicago

My new agency was able to immediatly get me out and working in the Chicago hospitals. In the first few months of doing local agency nursing work in Chicago I worked at over 15 local hospitals. I thought I would start by doing some per diem work and trying out some of the hospitals. The local nursing agencies were right because when I had a chance to meet a bunch of the local agency nurses I found out that there arent too many travel nurses in Chicago. There are a lot of hospitals in Chicago and a lot of local per diem work and local contract assignments.

I would suggest that you dont put all of your time into working with the travel nursing agencies. Chicago is not too travel nurse friendly. I guess they are stuck on using the local nursing agencies.

Good luck in your search.