Don’t let a difficult patient ruin your shift. Keep your cool under pressure with these handy tips.

Travel nursing is a rewarding career, but sometimes, you’ll meet a patient who ruins your day with their attitude. You know the type: rude, demanding, or maybe even downright abusive. Whatever the patient’s behavior, it’s still your job to care for his or her needs. So how do you manage to remain the awesome care provider you are when you are confronted with a nightmare patient? Here’s a checklist to help you keep your cool when treating a difficult patient as a travel nurse:

1. Remember It’s Not Personal: People are usually in a hospital for a reason — they are sick. They might also be afraid, lonely, or on medication that makes them irritable. Everyone reacts to these situations differently, so It’s important to remember that your patient probably isn’t at his or her best around you. Cut them a little slack.

2. Connect: Sometimes, patients just need someone to listen to them. Ask them what they are worried about, how you can help them in the current situation, or even begin your response with, “I understand why you might feel that way.” In most cases, patients appreciate your efforts more when you show them you care about them as a person, not just another patient.

3. Remain Calm: When a patient becomes verbally abusive, take a deep breath and stay calm. This doesn’t mean you have to plaster a fake smile on your face. You can diffuse a difficult situation with concise language. For example, it’s better to say, “I understand why you are upset. Please know that I am doing everything I can to help you,” than “I am doing all I can here. You will just have to wait.” It’s also a good idea to set a time limit for how long you are willing to listen to their complaints, and then if necessary, inform the patient you will return when they are ready to listen to you.

4. Know Your Emotional Triggers: Everyone has their own emotional baggage. Be aware of yours and what language might trigger it. If you are easily hurt by negative comments, take a few moments alone to recover before moving on with your day. Try to stay positive with a good sense of humor about the situation.

5. Recruit Help: Unfortunately, even the above tactics might not be enough in extreme cases. Sometimes patients can become violent. These patients might have a mental illness, be intoxicated or drugged. Whatever the reason for the outburst, you do not have to put up with physical abuse. When necessary, alert your immediate supervisor to the situation or call hospital security to help.

As a healthcare professional, you know that caring for difficult patients is part of the job. Although it’s not easy, handling these patients doesn’t always have to be a chore. These 5 tips on treating a difficult patient will help you remain a professional, confident travel nurse.

By Jeff Della Rosa

The Right Solutions

You have committed to the exciting field of travel nursing, and you want to be a successful healthcare traveler. You are ready to learn yet are unsure of the next step. We want to help you get there! We’ve spoken to long-time recruiters who have guided nurses and encouraged them on the path to success. They know what nurses have done to reach their goals. Our hope is that you land the job for you. This is part two in the series to help you get the job you want.

It’s time to determine your successful career path. Write down step-by-step the path you will take to reach the skill set you want and hang the plan on your mirror. Have a goal of where you want to be in a set number of years. Have patience and be realistic of how long it will take you to reach your goals. One cannot go from working in medical surgical to cardiovascular ICU overnight. As you develop your plan, choose a specialty you want to go into based on what you most enjoyed in nursing school. Select another specialty as a backup plan just in case.

Determine which certifications you will need. Take classes to earn them. If necessary, pay out of pocket for classes. For example, when working in medical surgical, a two-day oncology class might be offered for $200. Find out what assignments you will need to work. As an example, if you want to work in CVICU, recruiters recommend at least two years of experience in CVICU before working the unit as a travel nurse. Bring permanent experience to the job. Two years of experience working in a field such as ICU will help before starting to travel. This experience would allow you to transition from progressive telemetry to ICU.

Volunteer to float to different specialties during your assignments. Some specialties, such as medical surgical and oncology, might be on the same floor. Ask to float to work in other specialties. If you are in medical surgical, see if you can float to progressive telemetry or ICU. Put in your contract that you are willing to float to the units in which you have competency. Travel nurses are often the first to be asked to float. If available, accept opportunities to float to higher acuities. If moved to a higher acuity unit, learn from supervisors and ask questions. If working in progressive telemetry, you might watch a charge nurse remove wires from patients who have just come out of open heart surgery. Then, as you build up their trust in you, you might be given the opportunity to pull the wires. Gain more experience by shadowing a nurse on your own time. Make connections and develop a network of contacts to help you reach your goal.

Find out where help is needed.  Ask to be transferred to another department if a position you want becomes available. A hospital would rather move an existing nurse into an open position than hire someone new. Be flexible and have a good attitude. Do not narrow down your options. The more positions you are submitted for, the more interviews you will get. The more interviews you get the more offers you will have from which to choose.

Accept positions at teaching hospitals or academic medical centers. A teaching hospital offers opportunities to learn new skills while on the job. For example, if you are learning to treat burns, the charge nurse would see patients with serious cases, and they might be transferred to you to attend to as they recover. Gradually, you will be given more responsibility until you start to treat the more serious burns. These hospitals operate in conjunction with a university and foster a learning environment. Not only will nurses be developing their skills there, but also future physicians will be working on their residency there. The skills you learn at teaching hospitals will help you get assignments in the future. Here are some links to teaching hospitals: The University of New Mexico Hospital in Albuquerque, N.M., The University of Oklahoma Medical Center in Oklahoma City, Memorial Hermann in Houston, Texas.

While taking on new skills as a nurse is important to your career development, you might find that you are still struggling to get an interview for the job you want. Check back next month for the third blog about getting interviews.

Jeff Della Rosa is social media coordinator for The Right Solutions — a nationwide healthcare staffing company. Reach him via email at jdellarosa@therightsolutions.com. Find out more about The Right Solutions on our website, www.therightsolutions.com. Also, check us out on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Pinterest.

Check out these Travel Nursing Checklists!

There’s a lot to think of when you embark on a career as a travel nurse!

Whether you’re brand new or a vet, our Travel Nursing Checklists can be a huge help in getting and staying organized. We offer checklists that help you manage and navigate:

• Travel Nursing Hospital Interview Questions — Put your best face forward and highlight your skills and flexible personality when interviewing.
• Travel Nursing Agency Questions — Know what questions to ask when you are researching companies.
• Travel Nursing Housing Questions — Know what questions to ask when making housing requests.
• List of What Travel Nurses Pack — Make sure you think of all the important items that you will need while on assignment.
• List of Documents Needed For Travel Nursing — Be prepared with all of the appropriate paperwork you will need to begin a job in travel nursing.
• Travel Nursing Companies’ Contact Info — Contact more than 300 travel nursing agencies and figure out which company is the best fit for you.

Click here to check out our Travel Nursing Checklists in greater detail! We hope that they will help you find the right company and assignment, and ease your way from interviewing, to packing, to your first day on the job.

Abracadabra: Make yourself more marketable with these simple steps to get the job you want.

By Jeff Della Rosa
The Right Solutions

We’re excited you are looking to work in travel nursing. We want you to be happy with your career choice. We hope you land that dream job — the one you’ve always wanted but is seemingly out of reach. You wonder what more you can do to accomplish your goal. We’re here to help. We’ve done the research, and we’ve put together a series of blogs to give you some insight on how to get there. The first in the series is how to show prospective employers your value.

Dust off the awards, certificates and trophies you have earned as a nurse. Amaze a prospective employer with all your accomplishments. Sell yourself, but don’t sound like a salesperson, according to Harvard Business Review. Tell a story about an issue you or your department faced, explain your responsibilities and how you completed them. Be sure to say that you completed your responsibility. Speak about what happened as a result of your or your team’s accomplishment. You might have been recognized by a hospital. Show this recognition. Also present your caught-in-the-act and patient care awards. Don’t worry about being too modest on your skills checklist. Explain your experience and skills in a way that shows the value you have to offer, according to Forbes. Talk about what you have to contribute to a facility. Say whether you are bilingual, tell them about the charting systems you know and if you were a supervisor or have charge experience.

Present a solid work history. Show your experience at various hospitals. It is important to broaden your work history by taking shifts at multiple hospitals. The more places you work, the more people you work with. The more people you work with, the more you know. One of them might be your next solid reference who helps you get the assignment you want. Your solid reference must be someone who is easily reached and available to take call. Make sure to have a number of people who are willing to promote you. Have their cell phone numbers ready. When you have someone who can speak for you, it feels less like you are bragging and makes you look more credible, according to job-hunt.org. Get testimonials from several people to show how you are the right fit for the position. Another good source of information is a performance review from a supervisor. Use a positive review to describe your strengths. You can also use this information on your resume, which will be covered in an upcoming blog in this series.

While speaking highly on what you have to offer is important, it’s even more vital to show a broad work history as a nurse. Check back next month for the second blog in our series, and we will give precise details on how to develop your skills and succeed as a travel nurse.

Jeff Della Rosa is social media coordinator for The Right Solutions — a nationwide healthcare staffing company. Reach him via email at jdellarosa@therightsolutions.com. Find out more about The Right Solutions on our website, www.therightsolutions.com. Also, check us out on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Pinterest.

If you are a “Walking Dead” fan and also a nurse, this is the post for you!

Of course, it might not be zombies … maybe it’s a nuclear winter, an asteroid, or even climate change. Whatever the potential apocalyptic trigger, one thing is certain: We’re going to need a lot of nurses — and the ability to travel will be more important than ever!

The folks at The Nursing Bible shared this funny infographic, “A Nurse’s Guide to the Apocalypse.”

How Will YOU navigate the chaos? We hope it doesn’t come to this, but just in case here are a few facts and tips to prepare in the event of an apocalypse:

Source: TheNursingBible.com