Top Travel Nursing Tips From a Seasoned Traveler

• Travel nursing can be both exiting and nerve wracking. On one hand you get to see the country and gain new experiences. On the other, it’s another ‘first day on the new job’, type of nervousness. 
• Unlike traditional employment, travel nursing spends little time on onboarding and orientation and throws you right in the thick of it for you to show off your nursing skills. 
• There’s a lot of reading material on travel nursing, but little on travel nursing tips. Seasoned traveler, MaryJane Ilgenfritz shares her top travel nursing tips to help you survive on your new contracts. 

Lately it seems as if everyone is leaving their staff positions for travel nursing. Maybe it’s been a career long dream, or you like to travel.  

Whatever the reason, CONGRATULATIONS!  

I’ve been traveling for two years now with a specialty of Med-Surg/Onc and have loved the fast pace of learning a new environment.  

I come from a smaller city in Montana with only one hospital. I love it there and it’s where I want to settle, so travel nursing has been such a gift to work at larger facilities and learn how other floors function.  

My first contract, I went across the country and was so anxious about my first day and what to expect. Here is a rundown of my travel nursing tips to help you be the best, most prepared travel nurse! 

My Top Travel Nursing Tips

Be Our Guest

The first piece of advice: Come in as a guest.  

If you want to make changes to policy, become staff. Remember that the staff here have stayed, this is their home; be gracious and kind.  

With that said, bullying is never acceptable and if the facility isn’t safe and changes are not being made to ratios, staffing, etc., re-evaluate.  

Contracts are usually at-will for both parties (both you and the hospital). Yes, if you quit you may be black listed from a hospital, but if it’s unsafe you could lose your license.  

Research the place you want to work before signing on the dotted line. There are plenty of forums on social media that can help aid you in the process. 

Be Timely

Once you’ve arrived at the facility, your first day there will be administrative tasks. First and foremost, be on time. What I mean by that is, be 15 minutes early.  

Give yourself extra time to actually arrive at the hospital, find parking, and get to where you need to be.  

Your recruiter should send you the details at least the night before your start date and ideally days before.  

Onboarding and Timely

Onboarding is generally FIT testing, performing a QC check on a glucose monitor, ensuring you can use their IV pumps correctly, getting your badge, and obligatory mandatory reporting and compliance.  

If you haven’t used their charting system, there’s a separate class you’ll take for that. 

You should receive a schedule and what floor you’ll be working on. If there isn’t a tour, you should familiarize yourself with the layout of the facility.  

Throughout my contracts, orientation has ranged from 2 days to 4 hours. The norm is one full 12 hour shift.  

Remember, you are being hired for your experience in your specialty. Come ready to put your knowledge to work. You will likely have a full patient load.  

I learn best by seeing it first and then trying myself.  

My first day, I ask my preceptor to show me how they set up things: their patient list on the computer system, watch them chart one patient, ask them for tricks and tips for charting and contacting providers.  

Other Travel Nursing Tips Crucial to the Job

• Make sure your badge works on the doors you’ll need access to and that you’re registered in the medication dispensing system. Ideally this is done during onboarding. If it doesn’t work, make sure to get this fixed today because there’s nothing worse than coming in for your first solo shift and having to track down someone else who may not want to pull medications for you, much less narcotics! 
• Write down codes to doors. I write them on paper and tape them to the back of my badge.
• Go into the supply room and find the items you use the most. You’ll thank yourself later when you’re in a hurry to find something. 
• Write down the emergency number to call in codes. 
• Know when to call codes. Code Blue and Rapid Response should be in your skill set, but a facility I used to work at required us to call a Rapid after any fall as well.  
• Ask about the meals for the patients. Some facilities require the patient or nurse to call in, others don’t give options and meals are sent automatically. People are already sick, they don’t need to be hungry on top of that! 

The Bottom Line

That’s it! Those are my best travel nursing tips. 

Make sure to ask all the questions during your orientation and don’t be shy about asking additional questions when you have them! No one expects you to know everything, and especially coming into a new facility where policies and procedures can differ significantly.  

Talk to other travelers on the floor to see what they’ve found difficult or what they love about the unit. Bring in a positive attitude, willingness to work hard and be a part of the team. Best of luck!

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