Traveler Dumping

do you guys find that travelers get the worst assignments, worst patients, and are running around while the staff is not doing anything.

I agree with you for the most part. There are few full time staff that have a good work ethic. I like to explain it this way. " I came to this facility to help with the staff shortage, I did not come here to do majority of the work or work with the unpleasant surgeons since no one else wants to."

I definitely agree with you. Most of the hospitals I have been in you always get "all" of the worst patients assigned to your group, you are always the one to take the admits, you are the one who gets put on call first and a lot of times you are scheduled how the "staffing recruiter" wants to schedule you. And yes core staff usually sits around and talks while you work your a** off. But there have been a few hospitals where travelers were treated almost as core staff and there were places where nurses were glad to pitch in and help. I feel that teamwork is the key to success in the nursing field and no one person should feel they have to do it all alone.

Donna

Yes it happens the worst hospital I have experienced it in was at Saddleback Memorial Care in Laguna Hills, CA.

All other travelers felt the same way they had 55 travelers at one point and continualy looking. In orientation they there were 12 travelers and we heard a load of BS about how good they treat the travelers. High cancelation of shifts. Crappy assignments, first admits even when there are RNs with less patients than you.

It is sad when even some of their own staff feel that the travelers get craped on.

In my experiences as a travel nurse I have been to only one unit that blatantly dumped on me because of my Traveler status. Other places have tried, and I have asserted myself with the charge nurse with about a 50% success rate for assignment changes. I have also been at hospitals where local agency worked and I was cancelled, only to be told that quote: "They've been coming here forever." I now wil ask ahead about cancellation policy as it applies to contract versus un-contracted nurses. I, too, have run my legs off while staff sat around chatting, playing on-line and engaging in personal phone calls. Of course I am told that I am such a multi-talented wonderfully:luck: skilled......I get the most acutely ill, or the worst family to deal with and so on. If I am quiet and take the extra work without a peep I soon blend right in and the staff is soooo glad to have me. I now plan to continue a professional relationship over short-term "friends", while still being very much a team worker. All is still pleasant and friendly, but collegial rules so I can protect my assignment and do the best job I can do for my patients. Can't find the spell-check here so hope all is readable.

I am on my first travel assignment in Little Rock Arkansas at Arkansas Children's Hospital in a very busy NICU and I have to say it has been the worst assignment in my life. The Hospital is not bad except for the Nurses who work there are the meanest rudest and snotty I have ever met. We as traveler's always have the hardest assignment, always the chronic kids we never get the level 3 pts like we are trained to have. Travelers all have NRP while their staff does not. All of the travelers come from excellent backgrounds and could offer this hospital so much but the NICU doesn't want it. This is the worst hospital and I would not recommend that anyone take an assignment here. Arkansas people on the whole are very rude!

EXACTLY!.But you don't have to take it;my co.has a 30 notice to quit for whatever, I brought it up and was going to walk the nurse liason got involved and it soon subsided, and I finished the assignment. I don't mind working, but not when I'm the only one. They treat you like =--- too, because they know you'll leave soon, and they don't even try and get to know you.jealous of money i think. We're there to help. Don't they get it?

I have found it depends on where you work. I believe it is an attitude. In South Dakota and Montana, I was treated like I was helping them out of short staffing. In Texas and North Carolina, I was informed that the staff nurses were the priority and I was just there to help them. As a result I got the worst assignments in TX & NC and was treated pretty fairly in MT & SD. I think you have to examine the philosophy of the hospital.

I have encountered this especially in the southern hospitals. They know we are making more money, and try to make our assignments as uncomfortable as possible. Even the atmosphere is uncomfortable. I have enjoyed working in some of the northern Ca. hospitals. They would even fix going away dinners to say goodbye- really nice!

I am not a travel nurse, however, I make it my mission to welcome travel nurses and orient them to my facility. We had an emergency neuro surgery coming in and I offered to take it, but my superior told me, "no, give it to the travel nurse, she makes more money, let her do the hard work." When the superior wasn't looking, I ran in to help that nurse. I have learned a lot from travel nurses and I think they are invaluable to a facility; especially in light of short staffing when they are helping us.

mtrobin

as a nurse from Arkansas i find your comments about Arkasnas people being rude to be VERY bigoted. Your supposed to be an educated intelligent person, don't stereotype.

As for Ark Childrens NICU, I don't know anything about how its run from a nursing standpoint, but from the standpoint of a mother whose child was a patient there 5 years ago after being born 8 weeks premature, I loved my son's nurses and thought the facility was wonderful.

ChrisChirdo wrote:do you guys find that travelers get the worst assignments, worst patients, and are running around while the staff is not doing anything.

YES I AGREE DEFINETLY STAY AWAY FROM TIFTON GA ICU UNIT...ITS A HORRIBLE PLACE THE STAFF IS RUDE AND VERY UNFRIENDLY TOWARDS TRAVELERS. THE STAFF MEMBERS STATE "SINCE THE TRAVELERS MAKE SO MUCH MONEY WE WILL GIVE YOU THE WORST PATIENTS. YOU HAVE TO WORK FOR YOUR MONEY" THEY WILL NOT INCLUDED TRAVELERS OR LOCAL AGENCY WHEN THERE IS A LUNCHEON OR PIZZA WAS ORDERED FOR THE WHOLE UNIT. THEY MAKE SURE THEY TELL THE TRAVELERS AND AGENCY STAFF THAT ITS JUST FOR THE REGULAR STAFF ONLY.

I work L&D and have been lucky for the most part.
Most hospitals do adhere to the strict staffing guidelines for L&D units everywhere. One thing that I think does help is that I let people know that I travel b/c I'm not sure where I want to live eventually and want to test the waters before I commit to a particular area of the country. Maybe that is part of the reason I haven't had many problems...maybe they see me as a potential staffmember and don't want to scare me off. Either way, when I go to a new assignment, I pretty much expect to get dumped on and to be an outsider, then if it does happen, I'm not disappointed. So far it has only happened at one assignment and that was on a Post partum floor. They did tend to overload the travelers with the "difficult" pt's (fresh post-ops, mag pt's, multiple admissions) But we travelers worked together AND helped out everyone else (basically ran circles around'em)
Now that doesn't mean that there hasn't been at least one or two nurses at any given assignment that I've gotten the cold shoulder from or maybe an attitude, but I let it roll and go about my business and usually by the end of the assignment, we are fine. Hope this made sense, I'm REALLY tired!

Amberdouglas, let's face it, if nurses treated their fellow nurses with the compassion and sensitivity they treat their patients and families, we truly would be the noble profession.

I don't think it has anything to do specifically with treating other nurses with compassiona and caring, but with showing EVERYONE that respect. And making sterotypical generalizations about someone just becasue of the area they are from is not the way a nurse (who are the pillars of society) should act.

Yes, I agree it is silly to make a negative stereotype of an entire geographical area, but that was not my point. Patients and families see another side of nurses that they do not always consistently portray to their peers. We all know how mean nurses can be to each other. Does "eat their young" ring a bell? My point is that one cannot gauge the internal culture of a unit, that is to say, the working conditions, by the perspective of patients and families.

I agree, the patient perspective is always much differant from the nurse perspective. And I said, I don't know what its like there from a nursing standpoint. It may be really terrible at that hospital for travelers, I know I have been on assignments where the traveler is ALWAYS the first one to get an admission regardless of acuity of patients or number of patients, and the traveler is the one that no one wants to help during their code, but fully expect yout ot help them during theirs, and of course is ALWAYS expected to know every intricate detail of a facilities policies and procedures and know where everything is after just one 12 hour shift of orientation. I fully agree that travelers get treated like DIRT ( i have posted a rant before on that very subject). But I have NEVER said that just becasue I disliked a unit or a facility that everyone from that entire STATE was a scumbag. That was the part of the particular reply to the post that upset me. I may travel for a living, but I always go home because I love my home and I wish peole would reserve judgment for when they have experienced more than a small portion of it.