The Traveling Kind

Interviewing for a new job every three months can be stressful. After five years of traveling I still get revved up and anxious during an interview.  It's nerve wracking and exciting all at the same time. Here are a few questions I always ask to contribute to the interview and help me get a better feel for the unit I'm interviewing for. What is the nursing chain of command? For example, is there a charge nurse? Is he or she a free charge? Is there or are there resource nurses? What about the manager/director positions? How are they organized? Are you (the manger/director) on the unit frequently or at night? These questions can help get a sense of who you'll have as a resource on the unit and how involved you can expect management to be. Usually you just have to ask that first question and they'll offer all that other info without you having to ask. What is the doctor chain of command? It this a teaching hospital? Are there residents, fellows, nurse practitio...

I've received a lot of emails recently asking about what questions to ask when speaking with a travel company for the first time. Since I've written about four emails that were long enough to be a book I figured I'd post my favorite questions to ask here - since I guess this is a travel nurse blog and all. - - - - Of course the most important question:  "How much am I going to make?"   Like with everything in life it's complicated. I wish travel companies could streamline this process so that it was easier to understand. Simply put, travel companies have a set amount of money they are going to give you and they divide it up into a few different areas. Housing, hourly, meals or per diem, and travel reimbursement are the main ones you'll see. Some companies have more, others may have less, or they may be worded differently. You'll also notice companies present this information to you in different ways. Some will lump it all together and give you a ...

Howdy, howdy! We've finished up our time in Idaho Falls and made our way to Texas. We set up camp at our parents' house and here we've sat for the last 3 weeks, with one more week to go. So back in Idaho I mentioned we had two weeks left and still didn't have an assignment. Well, that didn't change until about 3 days ago. This has been the weirdest few weeks in the travel nurse universe. Apparently there's this lull in the PICU travel world. It's been hard for me and a lot of my friends to find their summer assignment. I don't know why it's happening or how long it'll last but I'm happy to report that it's finally over for me. I've accepted a night (😥) position at The Children's Hospital at TriStar Centennial in  Nashville, Tennessee ! I'm not super excited about the whole nights thing but we're ecstatic to be going back to beautiful Tennessee. We visited Nashville a few times while on assignment in Knoxville. Ryan loved ...

We didn't know this at the time, but as our dreams of RV life were coming true our world as we knew it was about to be shattered. The day we bought the RV we had taken Pearl to our vet for a cluster of seizures she had that morning. We were continually reassured that dogs just sometimes have seizures and that they would watch her for the day and start her on an anti-seizure medication. No big deal, we'd give Pearl her medicine twice a day and I was looking forward to not having to see her seize again. However, Pearl continued to have seizures the rest of the evening and through the night at the ER vets office. After a couple of days of continued seizures despite increases in meds and then eventually immobility our vet had met the extent of his expertise and advised us to take her to Boise to see a specialist. Ryan went down with her first in the RV and I went down the next day because I had to work. Once she had been seen we were given three options: seizures, meningitis, tumor...

Y'all. If you've been following our travel adventures for a little over year, you might remember all the drama with our tiny house/RV. If not let me catch you up here  and  here . The latter link has all the drama. I went back and read through it for the first time and dang, all those emotions came right back up. That whole process scarred me for life. Looking back, we learned so much even if it was pretty sucky, but it really helped us in the long run. After our huge disappointment last year, it took us a while to get back into finding the perfect tiny living situation for us. We would talk about it off and on and probably within the last month we started seriously considering going the RV route again. Initially, Ryan was wanting to see if we could find a trailer we could tow with our Escape. But after a couple of mildly disappointing realizations (the lighter trailers don't have toilets or showers, no thanks), we started to entertain the idea of getting a motorhome again....

Since before we got to Idaho we had friends telling us we just had to go to Boise. A couple of people even compared it to Austin (that was a bit of a stretch😬). So we put it at the top of our list and and we booked our Airbnb. When I say 'we' I mean Ryan and when I say 'Airbnb" I mean yurt. When he sent me the page the yurt was beautiful and seemed fun at the time so I immediately said yes. Just FYI for those looking into staying in a yurt...there are no bathrooms in a yurt. Therefore you must trek outside in sub 40 degree weather across the yard and into the far back of a garage in the dark, or at least we had to. I'm sure not all yurts are created equal. After 4 hours of driving we finally arrived in Boise around lunchtime. We had a delicious lunch at Bittercreek Alehouse and then walked around the 8th Street area. Freak Alley Gallery-an alley covered in beautiful art End of Freak Alley "Checking in" to our yurt Horrible photo of the...