4 Things Travel Nurses Need to Know About Latest Superbug Gene

Posted on June 2, 2016 by TNC

A drug-resistant superbug, known as mcr-1 gene, has appeared for the first time in the U.S. Travel nurses need to be aware of the risks associated with this superbug.

Researchers recently reported a drug-resistant superbug gene has appeared for the first time in the U.S. Healthcare professionals are understandably concerned for the safety of their patients and the general population as a whole. In particular, travel nurses must stay vigilant as the nature of their jobs requires them to relocate to different facilities year round. Below are the top 4 things travel nurses should know about the latest superbug gene.

It’s known as the mcr-1 gene: The latest superbug gene, called mcr-1, was found in a Pennsylvania woman with an e-coli infection last month. In her case, the gene mutated the e-coli bacteria to be resistant to colistin, a medication among a handful of antibiotics that can still treat drug-resistant strains of bacteria. Fortunately, her case was treatable with other last-ditch effort antibiotics.

The gene can spread between species of bacteria: The mcr-1 gene is located on a tiny bit of DNA called a plasmid, which is easily transferable between species. Bacteria can mutate quickly, but the plasmid provides an extra shortcut. What scientists and healthcare professionals are worried about is the potential rise of a giant superbug. Hypothetically, the mcr-1 gene could pass on its traits to another bacterium with other mutations and create a giant superbug. This giant superbug would be resistant to all known antibiotics, and could throw civilization back to the era before prescription drugs.

It’s nasty, and there are others out there: This mutant gene was first found in China in 2015, and since then it’s been popping up around the world. It’s also been found in a range of bacteria. Since the woman in Pennsylvania hadn’t traveled recently, it means that the mcr-1 gene has probably been flying under the radar in the U.S. for a while. Although this gene isn’t the giant superbug, it’s still hard to treat. The mcr-1 gene was resistant to several other classes of antibiotics, including fluoroquinolones.

Your patients could be carriers of superbugs: For years, it’s been known that drug-resistant strains of bacteria have the potential to be found on medical equipment, and even occasionally healthcare workers themselves. However, a recent study conducted by the University of Michigan found that 25 percent of hospital patients tested had some sort of drug-resistant germ on their hands when they were discharged from the hospital.

The superbug may be a scary prospect, but arming yourself with knowledge can help protect you and the patients you serve. Click here to refresh your training on basic infection control and personal protective equipment guidelines. To learn more about the mcr-1 gene, you can read the published study in the journal Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy here.

As a healthcare professional, what are your thoughts on the latest news regarding the mcr-1 gene?

Summertime Travel Nursing: Making the Most of Your Travel Nurse Assignment

Posted on July 17, 2015 by TNC

Summertime Travel Nursing: Making the Most of Your Travel Nurse Assignment

Although its allure entices many travel nurses (and rightfully so!), not every assignment can be in beautiful, beachy, sunny Hawaii. But the good news about summertime travel nursing is that the climate generally gets a little more awesome nationwide — making it the perfect time to really get out there and make the most of your travel nurse assignment.

As most travelers know, and as TNC shared here recently, every state has something that makes it beautiful! So here are a few fun, summertime links I found to help you make the most of your summertime travel nurse assignment:

Travel Nursing Blogs did a fun roundup of Ultimate Roadside Attractions for Travel Nurses here, including some of the more unique destinations to check out while on or heading to your assignment, such as the Oregon Vortex, Carhenge, the World’s Largest Six-Pack, and even driving through a redwood tree in California! TNB also has a post about Summer Survival for Travel Nurses here.

Nursing Link did a post about fun summer nursing jobs here. Although not traditional travel nursing jobs, they are in the same vein. The post discusses the options of summer camp nurse and cruise ship nurse!

Fastaff offered a roundup of general summer health and safety tips here. It’s all stuff you should know, but it’s never a bad idea to review.

American Traveler offers some summertime tips for specific locations here.

Medical Solutions offers some info on some of the best locations for a summer travel nursing contract here.

RN Central has an older (2011, but still relevant) post about 5 great working vacations for summer travel nurses here.

And here is a great story about a traveler named Deb Keller who made the most of her summer assignment in the Midwest.

Wherever you land this season, just be sure to make the most of it and have some hot fun this summertime!

How Recruiters and Travel Nurses Can Build Trust

Posted on April 2, 2015 by TNC

Find out how you and your recruiter can build and maintain a trustworthy relationship.

Sometimes, in order to learn how to do something well, it’s helpful to understand how it should not be done. Over at Blue Pipes Blog, Kyle Schmidt recently shared a pair of posts that illustrate this — one about ways recruiters betray the trust of travel nurses and one about ways travelers betray the trust of recruiters.

14 Ways Recruiters Betray the Trust of Travel Nurses

Before diving in, Schmidt notes that the “travel healthcare industry is unique in ways that tend to accentuate the importance of trust between candidate and recruiter.” For example, he writes, healthcare travelers are not just depending upon their recruiters for a job, but often also counting on them for housing and travel arrangements as well as help coordinating the many documents and credentials needed to be in order prior to an assignment.

Including quotes from actual nurses pulled from forums and social media, Schmidt then details his list of the 14 ways recruiters can compromise travel nurses’ trust. Themes from this list include any lack of being upfront, lack of communication and follow-up, being too pushy, proceeding without a nurse’s permission, pay issues, and more. Click here to read this blog in full.

15 Ways Travel Nurses Compromise the Trust of Recruiters

After Schmidt’s article described above, he says he got requests — primarily from travelers — that he do an article on how travel nurses compromise the trust of recruiters. He carefully explains that neither list is representative of all recruiters or all travelers, and that perhaps this set of articles will help “bridge gaps between travelers and recruiters.”

After discussing that it’s in each traveler’s best interest to maintain a trusting relationship with their recruiters, Schmidt dives into the ways travel nurses can compromise their recruiters’ trust. These can include disrespect for housing, repeatedly cancelling shifts or backing out of contracts, lack of communication, incomplete paperwork, missing interviews, not being upfront, and more. Click here to read this full post.

How Recruiters and Travel Nurses Can Build Trust

It seems to me after reading both posts that most of these issues boil down to honesty and communication. A good, solid relationship with your recruiter is key to your success as a travel nurse. To that end it’s important that both parties treat each other with respect and honesty.

First, you need to work with someone you’re compatible with. Beyond that, ethical behavior on both ends and a two-way street approach to good, honest communication seems to be the best recipe for a happy traveler-recruiter relationship. I hope these tips on how not to be will help you and your recruiters be aware of how to be in order to have the most successful relationship possible.

Make Yourself More Marketable, Step 3: Why am I not getting interviews?

Posted on February 2, 2015 by TNC

“Make sure to promote your value by listing all relevant experience on your resume.”

By Jeff Della Rosa
The Right Solutions

You might wonder what you’re doing wrong. You might worry that it’s you. But you need to ask yourself some important questions so you can determine why you’re not getting interviews. In part three of the series, we’ll address those questions and what you need to do to get interviews.

Look at your profile to see what hospitals are seeing. (Check out our sample profile below.) What can you improve before you show it to potential employers? Is your profile presented in a digital format or is it handwritten? How about color? Deion Sanders said the first step of being good is to “look good.”

The resume is a snapshot into your life. It’s what potential employers look at before they call you for an interview. Make sure to promote your value by listing all relevant experience on your resume. Present most of your accomplishments and job duties in bullet points. Most human resource employees spend a minute at the most on your resume, according to Forbes. Because of this, your resume should be concise. Bullet points allow for them to find keywords more quickly. You might have to simplify it to keep it from being too long. It should not be more than two pages.

Maybe you have something in your resume that is turning off a potential employer. It’s important to not have employment gaps, or at least as few as possible. Share your experiences that have had positive outcomes. Strengthen your resume by listing multiple examples of these experiences. Consider writing out your objective in your profile. What do you want? Set goals and be specific.

Look at developing two resumes. One should be very detailed to include all your experience and skills. The second should be tailored to show that you have the experience to meet the requirements of the job you want. A resume that doesn’t show that you’ll excel at the desired position is the top reason most people aren’t getting interviews, according to U.S. News. Make sure your resume shows what you accomplished at your previous assignments. Don’t just list where you previously worked. This won’t tell a potential employer anything about how well you did at the jobs. People who get the most interviews list their achievements at each job. Human resource employees don’t care that you’ve worked a bunch of jobs in a row.

Write a cover letter that shows more than a summary of what you’ve already presented in your resume. If your cover letter is only a summary of your resume, it’s not going to help you, and you might as well not send one, according to U.S. News. A good cover letter will show why you will be good at the job you want. Be inspiring. Add some personality to your cover letter, and you’ll start getting calls for interviews.

Ask the right people to look over your resume and cover letter. You might have let multiple people look at your resume, and they tell you it’s fine. Don’t settle for a resume that’s fine. Make it great! Sometimes family and friends aren’t the best people to review your resume. Ask someone with hiring experience to look at it and provide feedback. A test to see whether someone will provide good feedback is to give them a resume with just a list of job duties instead of achievements. If they say it’s fine, you’ll know to look on for advice.

If you want a position in which you have no work history, explain to employers why you would be a great fit for the job. You can’t rely on them to figure it out. Others who are looking at the position you want might already have the needed experience to do the job. Because of this, getting this job will be a challenge. Employers might not be willing to take a chance on you when they have other applicants with previous experience in the position.

So we’ve covered three key areas on making yourself more marketable: promote your value, transition to advanced skills positions and how to get more interviews. We hope we’ve helped to make you more marketable. Good luck and go land your dream job!

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.

Make Yourself More Marketable, Step 2: Transitioning to higher acuity units

Posted on December 16, 2014 by TNC

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.

Transition to higher acuity units illustration - Make Yourself More Marketable, Step 2: Transitioning to higher acuity units

Travel Nursing Checklists

Posted on December 12, 2014 by TNC

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.

Make Yourself More Marketable: Simple steps to get the job you want

Posted on November 19, 2014 by TNC

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.

A Nurse’s Guide to the Apocalypse

Posted on March 20, 2014 by TNC

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

How to Become a Nurse Leader

Posted on January 31, 2014 by TNC

Travel nursing can be great experience for a future career as a nurse leader.

Not all travel nurses want to become nurse leaders, but traveling is definitely an excellent way for you to beef up your resume if you are interested in that career path down the line.

When executives and administrators see travel nursing on your resume it automatically tells them that you are capable, flexible, dependable, professional, and highly skilled. Travel nurse must be able to jump right in to a new hospital environment with little local training and provide excellent patient care without missing a beat.

In case you are interested in one day pursuing a career as a nurse leader, we wanted you to check out this informational guide on how to become a nurse leader: “The Ultimate Guide to Becoming a Nurse Leader.”

It’s a pretty handy guide that includes several links, graphics, and lots of information for nurses, whether you want to jump in nurse leadership right now, or if you are a younger nurse — maybe even a student — and you just want to make sure that you are on the right path to end up where you want to be.

One example of how travel nursing can be great practice for nurse leadership is the 5 qualities they mention as essential for all nurse leaders are: self-confidence, courage, growth, communication, and appreciation. All of these qualities must be practiced and excelled at by travel nurses while on assignment.

Also, you will get to sample a lot of different facilities over your time as a travel nurse. You get to see a number of different approaches to running a hospital or leading a nursing staff; you get to see what works and what doesn’t, or how certain approaches are best fitted to certain situations but not to others. This can give you excellent perspective when later working as a nurse leader.

We hope you enjoy the guide on how to become a nurse leader!

Ask a Travel Nurse Expert!

Posted on August 6, 2012 by TNC

Have a question about travel nursing? Whether you are a veteran road warrior or a newbie to the travel nursing world, our advice is always available. Ask one of our travel nurse experts any questions you might have that you just might not be able to find online.

Get some Travel Nurse Advice right now.

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Your one stop blog for everthing travel nursing

Tag Archives: travel nurse advice

4 Things Travel Nurses Need to Know About Latest Superbug Gene

Summertime Travel Nursing: Making the Most of Your Travel Nurse Assignment

How Recruiters and Travel Nurses Can Build Trust

Make Yourself More Marketable, Step 3: Why am I not getting interviews?

Make Yourself More Marketable, Step 2: Transitioning to higher acuity units

Travel Nursing Checklists

Make Yourself More Marketable: Simple steps to get the job you want

A Nurse’s Guide to the Apocalypse

How to Become a Nurse Leader

Ask a Travel Nurse Expert!