By Julie Benn, NurseZone contributor
She has already graced the October 2005 covers of Cath Lab Digest and EP Digest in feature stories, and now Dana Rushing, RN, is taking time to talk about what it’s like being a first-time travel nurse.
Rushing, 45, likes to stay put. In 18 years of nursing this cath lab nurse has only worked at a handful of hospitals outside of her Alabama home, with stints as long as 12 years. So for her to even consider becoming a traveler was a big step outside her comfort zone. But she did decide to broaden her horizons and signed up with a friend to travel.
Unfortunately, her travel agency “did me wrong,” Rushing said. By the time she and her friends were packed and ready to go on a Thursday, with a start date of the following Monday, the agency told them that the position had been eliminated, leaving her in the lurch in finding another job.
Frustrated with her first travel nursing experience, her friend had used another agency called NurseChoice with success. In fact, that same friend was already on assignment in Stamford, Connecticut, and there was a need for another cath lab nurse. Rushing signed on with NurseChoice and they were able to place her at the same hospital her friend was at within days.
“My recruiter has been nothing but accommodating,” she said. “I’ve had very few problems and all were straightened out immediately.” She is now working in the cath lab and electrophysiology lab and has already been asked to extend her eight-week assignment.
Prior to her first travel assignment, and her nursing career, Rushing was a single mother and had worked in administrative positions in a hospital and as an assistant at a doctor’s office. She met a nurse who became her mentor, taught her how to do injections and really took her under her wing and inspired Rushing to go into nursing school.
After graduating, she worked in ICU for two years and then went to the cath lab. Her son was eight months old when she started nursing. He got used to her being called in to work in the middle of the night, and always said, “There goes my mom, and she’s going to save a life,” Rushing recalled.
When her boy was a baby she would sometimes take him into the cath lab lounge and let him sleep there. “That’s one of the best things about nursing—your coworkers are understanding about family care needs.”
Other best things about nursing? “No one can take it away from you. Once you are a nurse, you practically have a job waiting for you wherever you want to go.”
This is definitely true, especially where travel nursing is involved. Rushing’s goal is to see the continental United States, part of which she has already seen from taking rides with her dad who was a truck driver when she was growing up. Plus she has friends all over the country that she’d love to visit, and believes travel nursing is the way to do it.
Her advice to new travelers? “Be sure to check out the travel company very well, make sure the assignment is there before you travel. Also, pack light. I packed way too much. And most of all have fun. Don’t work too hard that you can’t enjoy the places where you are.
“Nursing really is a great career,” Rushing summarized, adding with a laugh, “Hey, [in] what other job can you get pinched, bitten, scratched, thrown up on, pooped on, peed on, cussed out, and get paid for it?”
© 2006. AMN Healthcare, Inc. All Rights Reserved.