Travel nursing requires you to adapt frequently and quickly. Your contracts last 13 weeks, and you move on. Along the way, you can and will make mistakes. These mistakes could not potentially harm your patients, but they can sometimes affect your contract and how your co-workers treat you. We recently asked our Facebook network members what the most common mistakes travel nurses make. They voted on the following mistakes as the most common mistakes that Travel Nurses make.
Getting Lost
We have all gotten lost going somewhere new. Make sure you know your route ahead of time. Also, make sure you give yourself plenty of time to get to your destination. That way, if you do run into issues or you do end up lost, you don’t risk missing the first day of your new assignment. Getting lost seems like it shouldn’t be an issue with GPS at our fingertips. However, sometimes GPS can mislead us or run into traffic situations that we must reroute our trip. This could, in turn, make for a longer than anticipated trip or getting lost.
Saying “Well, at this other hospital we did it this way, not your way”
Just because you did it a certain way at other hospitals doesn’t mean that is necessarily the norm for every facility. Many facilities have their own way of doing things that they feel are the safest and efficient way. Even if you feel the way you did it at another facility is more efficient or prefer that way, it is best to keep that. The staff nurses do it the way they have been trained to and aren’t really interested in hearing how it is done at other places.
Not communicating issues with your recruiter
If you are having problems with your assignment or the facility, it is essential to make these things known to your recruiter. They aren’t going to know that there are issues if you don’t tell them. They will probably assume things are going great for you. Keeping the lines of communication between you and your recruiter is very important. Communication with your recruiter is important even if there aren’t any problems. But it is essential if you are having problems. They need to know what issues you are having. Otherwise, they can’t help you fix them.
Talking about how bad the hospital is constantly
It seems obvious, but sometimes we get annoyed, and things slip out. Even if you don’t like the hospital or have been to much better facilities, saying so will not go well. The facility staff may not have any experience at any other facility; to them, the facility may be great. And even if they don’t believe this, hearing someone who is a contract employee coming in and talking bad about the facility isn’t going to make them happy.
There are probably other mistakes that travel nurses make. Have you made any of these mistakes or seen other mistakes travel nurses have made? Comment them below.
