We honestly haven’t had many situations over the years where a Traveler we placed was really unhappy with her assignment. If we did have a lot of these, I would not be very happy with my team since I consider it our job to make sure that our Travelers know what to expect on their assignment and like their travel experience.

However, if a Traveler gets into a situation where they are really unhappy with the Hospital, with the agency, with the housing accommodations, etc. the first thing the Traveler should do is let your recruiter know. Be specific…and if you have a suggestion on how to fix the problem…let your recruiter know. It is always a good idea to use your recruiter as a confidant instead of telling the hospital personal because it can have an effect on you. Your recruiter can give you advice on the best way to handle the situation without putting you into a poor light with the Hospital or the agency will get involved if that is the right solution. Lets face it, once a Nurse gets a poor  reputation it is hard to shake it and of course the agency wants the Traveler/Hospital to be happy. Believe me when I say that rarely is it the Travelers fault but there are ways of handling things that allow a Traveler to get what they want without hurting your reputation.

The most we have seen this with is when a Hospital asks you to float to an area that you either 1- do not want to float to or 2- feel you are not qualified for. Floating is such a big deal to our Travelers that our agency requires the Hospital to put it in writing before you start your assignment and my advice to a Traveler is to make sure any agency you work with does the same. We have had to go to bat for our Travelers when a Hospital wants to float our Traveler to another area that the Traveler doesn’t want to be floated to. Now, does this happen often, but often the best result is when the Traveler talks to our recruiter about the details of their problem. We love standing up for our good Travelers and I think most agencies feel the same way!

If the recruiter you are working with doesn’t address your concern or problem in a timely manner then ask for the recruiters manager or for the agency’s President (one benefit of working with a smaller aency is that you have access to upper level management who can get things done). A timely rsponse means that you should have an update as to what is going on within 24 hours. When approaching agency managers or executives, they will typically listen to your problem and will have to get the team together to come up with a solution. From my personal experience it is best not to threaten anyone but to work with people to get what you want. Be understanding and give the agency a reasonable timeframe to address the problem.

I firmly believe that most agency’s want you to be happy and will do what it takes to make it so you can complete your contract. Open and calm communication is the best.

I was at three Hospitals on Friday and the Human Resource Directors and I had long discussions about how Nurse Managers interview Travel Nurses. The HR Directors all talked about their Nurse Managers not asking enough detailed questions in interviews about the Travelers experience, skill set and personality which leads to mismatches. (All of them informed me that HEALTHCAREseeker.com does an excellent job of providing quality Travelers but that other agencies are not as thorough.)

 I explained to the HR directors that I have sat in on Hospital/Traveler telephone interviews in the past and I was amazed how short they were and how little the Hospital asked about the Travelers background assuming that since the agency sent the the nurse over, that the nurse was qualified. I explained to the HR Directors that the agency only knows what the Hospital tells us in the job write up and that often, the Hospital isn’t providing enough information to help us talk about the Hospital culture, patients, etc. Even though good agencies ask Hospitals for additional information, we don’t always get the answers.

I suggested that HR should send a list of potential interview questions for the Hospital Nurse Managers so that the NM could be more thorough in their Traveler interviews. They loved this idea and we are writing up a list of questions.

My suggestion to all Travelers is that you need to ask lots of questions on your interview so that you make sure it is a good match for you AND THE HOSPITAL It is everyone’s best interest that you get the assignment you want.

At HEALTHCAREseeker.com, whenever we have an interview schedule for a Traveler, we provide that Traveler with a list of questions that help you better understand the Hospital, the patients and the area.

Florida Governor Charlie Crist has immediately suspended state licensure requirements for traveling U.S. nurses, who have valid licenses in their home states or territories, and who want to work in Florida. The suspension is slated for 90 days.

The governor said in an executive order this week that the move was needed to cover a temporary nursing shortage that was created because many Florida nurses are in Haiti to help the recovery effort from the Jan. 12 earthquake.

I just came out of a training meeting with my team of Recruiters on how to help our Travel nurses on their interviews with Hospital Nurse Managers. Our team put together (actually updated) our interview prep worksheet that we will now be reviewing with all of our Travelers who have interviews. Although we already felt we do a good job of matching our Travelers with the Hospital having a 75% interview to close ratio, we felt that we could improve if we made sure that each of our candidates presented were better prepared for the interview.

Part of that preparation involved making sure that our Recruiters of course cover information such as bed size, type of patients seen, hospital/unit culture, etc. We certainly believe that we owe it to our Travel nurses and the hospitals we serve to make sure each have a strong understanding of each other before the interview.

We also taught our Recruiting team that we need to help our Travel Nurses zero in on areas of their own experiences that the Hospital would be interested in hearing about and to remind our Travelers to talk about that experience more. Part of this idea came from a recent example when one of our best Travel nurses, who has traveled with us for 7 years, didn’t get 2 jobs because she didn’t talk about herself enough.

Lastly, we emphasized to our team that we need to prepare our nurses to ask questions in the interview. In a recent interview of one of our Travelers and a Hospital, we were able to listen to the call and we were surprised how short the interview was and how little both parties knew about each other. Considering that the Traveler was going to be coming clear across the country we definitely wanted each party to be really sure that the Hospital and Traveler were a good match for each other.

HEALTHCAREseeker.com mission is to be the best company at providing Travelers with a Rewarding Travel Experience and this all starts with making sure that the correct expectations are set about the Traveler/Hospital.  The net amount is that our team of recruiters now have a guideline to help our Travel Nurses make sure they present themselves in the best light and that our Travelers ask good questions to make sure the assignment is a good match.

For the past two days I have been visiting Hospitals throughout New York City and every time I do this, it is an eye opening experience. Like most of the Hospitals spread out throughout the country, each Hospital in NYC is different. Some Hospitals are very nice looking with the newest equipment and others are really run down. In addition,  Hospitals in NYC are huge with many Hospitals having thousands of beds. The Hospitals that are run down are really amazing to watch the volume of patients they are seeing.

The more I travel to NYC the more I realize that our agency, www.HEALTHCAREseeker.com, has a much better handle on the culture of each NY Hospital and I believe we are better able to communicate to our Travel Nurses what to expect because we have made a substantial amount of Travel Nurse and Allied Professional placements here.

I also think that because we are located less then 30 minutes from NYC our whole team does a much better job then many of the Travel companies that are not located in the NYC area (most true Travel companies are not located in the North East). In addition, our whole team goes to NYC so often that we really grasp the type of Traveler that would love or hate their assignment.

After visiting several Hospitals recently I have been told that some Hospitals refuse to hire any Travel Nurses or Allied Professionals that live within a 50 mile radius of the Hospital. Some explanations were related to union contracts and others were because the hospital did not want to pay a higher Traveler rate for someone who could work per diem. Other Hospitals have these rules, but just don’t enforce them. If you are a local Traveler , make sure you talk to your agency about any Travel jobs that you are considering to see if any of the Hospital restrictions would apply. If you would like to see a number of Travel jobs across the country please feel free to go to http://www.healthcareseeker.com/alljobs.asp.

HEALTHCAREseeker.com, on behalf of it’s employees, has made a sizable donation to Unicef for the children of Haiti to help that country and its people due to the recent earthquake. HEALTHCAREseeker.com has a history of helping people in time of great distress and has made similar donations to Habitat for Humanity ( New Orleans, Newark NJ, Bali), gives blood at Hospital centers, builds housing for disadvantaged areas and in general tries to do the right thing. If you would like to make a donation to Unicef the URL is:

I had an interesting appointment with a few of our Hospital clients. Each of them expressed opinions that the Hospital expects Travel Nurses to be more Professional then per diem nurses. By professional they said rarely missing shifts or/and showing up on time. It is our experience that the Hospitals also expect the Trael Nurses to come to speed quickly.

What was also interesting was that the Hospital personel I meet with said the agencies that do only Travelers, and not per diem staff, do a much better job of sending Registered Nurses who know what the Hospital is about and are better qualified for the position.

2010 will be a much better year then 2009 to Travel for Nurses and Allied professionals. Since October of 2009 we have seen a 100% increase in the number of Travel jobs and it has continued to rise each month since. As jobs continue to rise so does the amount of money that Travelers can make due to demand. We are seeing a 10% increase in what hospitals are willing to pay and in response we are able to pay Travelers 10% more. Our HEALTHCAREseeker.com team were all excited to learned that for the second year in a row we where selected to the Inc 500 for the fastest growing company in the United States. We were also the only Travel Nurse staffing companyto be in that list.

If you are looking to Travel in 2010, please visit our web site for Rewarding Travel Experiences. www.healthcareseeker.com