Our Cali & Texas Nursing Experience
In this episode, we would like to talk about our Texas nursing experience. Our Contract is finishing up, and we want to compare travel nursing in California vs Texas vs our Chicago staff jobs.
Last year in 2021, we had the pleasure of traveling nurses to 2 states, working in 3 hospitals & travel to 7 different states.
It’s a privilege to be able to experience many different settings both in and out of work. Since we started travel nursing it increased our overall awareness of the world.
It also improved our communication skills, increased our maturity and confidence, and ultimately cultivated us to be more well-rounded.
Our Travel nursing journey started in October 2020 and extended into a 7-month contract till April of 2021 in Santa Monica California.
Santa Monica experience:
- Hospital experience
- Travel nurses are being canceled for high rates (Things slowed down in March)
- Cali breaks/break nurse
- ECMO/CRTs
- Nurse extenders
- Epic charting
- Given uniform in Santa Monica
- Carpooling – different schedules
- Donors donating food during the pandemic
The Santa Monica contract ended because they didn’t want to extend us for another month. C19 slowed down drastically end of March and there wasn’t a need for us anymore. Things turned out for the better since we were able to try our first-day position.
The transitional part to another contract was quite stressful because the agency we originally were working with couldn’t land us another contract in the area we wanted to.
It wasn’t worth relocating homes for one month so instead, we called our friend that owns a travel agency and was able to hook us up with a contract in Pasadena California for 6 weeks.
Pasadena Hospital:
- Transitioning to the day shift from nights
- Working our first dayshift
- 30-minute shorter breaks vs Santa Monica
- How this hospital handled C19 ICU nurse had 4 patients, but the extenders did meds and basics ADL’s and the ICU nurse managed the drips, vent, and critical care tasks.
In our 3rd contract of 2021, we ended up going to Austin, Texas. This was our first contract that didn’t go according to plan.
We started on 10/25 instead of 10/11. Things we had to plan out when it came to starting dates are; flights, housing, and transportation.
Austin Hospital:
- Back to working nightshift
- Paper charting
- Meditech vs Epic
- Overall patient care
Tips for travel nurses:
- 3-4 weeks to start considering the next travel nursing contract
- What is your desire? What type of nursing?
- How many hours do you want to work as a travel nurse? 36,48,60?
- Stand up for yourself, if you feel like you are getting treated unfairly, high-acuity floated too much, and the transition of care.
- Check your paystub carefully
- Don’t sign a lease for longer than your contract.
Here’s how our travel nurse experience in Cali and Texas went, click here for the full episode 👇👇👇
TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 Introduction
0:52 Cup of Nurses Introduction
2:40 Episode Introduction
8:10 Our Santa Monica California Experience
13:39 The Difference of Santa Monica Hospital
17:00 Cool Santa Monica Uniform!
19:49 Break Nurse Experience
25:03 Why We Don’t Get Extended
27:43 Our First Day Shift Experience: Pasadena
28:15 Working with Small Travel Nursing Agency
30:35 How Pasadena Handles Covid Patients
39:33 The difference between Pasadena & Sta. Monica
43:32 For the first time, things didn’t work out 🙁
52:23 Advice on Travel Nursing