OK, I'm new to the forum and I really don't like being negative or discussing thing that cause me to channel negative energy. But I need to vent, maybe therapeutic and helpful so someone will learn from my experience.

Here's the story in a nutshell. After working a local assignment for about a year and paying off essentially all of my debt, I decided to travel. The decision to travel was based on being accepted to an out-of-state medical school so why not travel to the region prior to the start of school and recon the area. So I put my feelers out for an assignment. Initially, things were tight so I kinda took the first available assignment close to the city of the school and here is what I learned.

1. Never sign with American Mobile Nursing! My recruiter was cool but the process to get started was terrible. They don't pay well and for what you have to put up with as a "traveller" is definitely not worth it.

2. Stay away from Colorado Springs. It's a military town which I can deal with being a vet, but extremely conservative. Also the weather is very schizophrenic. 80 degrees one day and snowing the next. Most importantly, there are only two hospitals in town and the pay is terrible.

3. Stay away from Memorial Health Systems. Honestly, the entire hospital is not bad, only the unit that I agreed to work which explains why they need travel nurses. I found out recently that many travel nurses simply quit. Here are the issues. First you will float, not just at the beginning of the shift and sometimes a couple of times in a shift. My first day after an all day orientation reviewing policy I was asked to come over to the hospital for four hours and help out. I'm easy so I agreed. I received my assignment without ever having hospital orientation(didn't even know where the bathroom was). To make matters worse, my computer access was not complete so charting was very difficult. Next, a couple of day later a supervisor let a racial slur slip. I was like I know she just didn't say what I think she said. I just wrote it off and didn't make anything of it but definitely don't feel comfortable with the supervisors. Finally the floating policy. Travellers float first. So that means if you have your assignment and they have to call in someone, you have to give up your assignment in the middle of the shift and go to another unit to work. Oh yeah, Memorial is very manager heavy which means if there are 6 nurses, 2 are managers and don't take patients.

Now, to be fair I realize that as a travel nurse you are likely to receive the worst assignments and will have to float but cmon. Regular staff think travel nurses make a ton of money but I took a $13.00 pay cut when I took this assignment because compensation was not my motive, I was trying to get acclimated to the new state I'm moving to. Also, until you prove that you are a graduate of an accredited nursing school, they assume that you're a dumbass. So much for 13 years of nursing experience!

In the military I used to say, " I can live on an island with the devil for such and such amount of time". Maybe I was wrong!