MedPro

If you’re an RN, LPN, LVN or other nurse assistant and you’re wondering if now would be a good time to further your career with RN certification, a BSN or even an MSN, let us assure you that the answer is YES!

The critical nursing shortage touted over the last few years wasn’t as acute recently due to the recession, primarily for two reasons:

1. Nurses who had planned to retire didn’t and stayed in the workforce due to a spouse’s job loss.
2. Nurses who already were working part time upped their schedules to full time (often due to the aforementioned spousal loss of employment).

But while the recession mitigated the severity of the nursing shortage, other factors will help make the shortage critical once again relatively soon.

The American Nurses Association three issues will create a nursing shortage in the coming years. They are:

1. An aging nursing workforce. The median age for nurses in 2010 was 46 and more than half of the nursing workforce is nearing retirement.
2. The aging of the baby boomers. More than 8,000 boomers are turning 65 each day. One needs more medical care with age rather than less and the nation will need more RNs to help care for these seniors.
3. The Affordable Care Act (ACA) means more people will have health insurance. Which means more people will take advantage of that health insurance and visit physicians for checkups and wellness care. More nurses – as well as other health professionals – will be needed as a result.

In addition, the U.S. Department of Health projects (note it’s not saying it “predicts”), that the country will need 400K new nurses in by 2015 just to fill vacancies left by finally retiring nurses. The Department of Health projects even further to 2020, when it believes the country will be short between 800K and one million (italics ours) new and replacement nurses.

So is 2013 a good time to begin your journey to receive your RN, BSN or even MSN?

Once again, our short answer is: Yes!

Hospitals and other healthcare facilities already are clamoring for experienced RNs who want to work in short-term (13 weeks, on average) travel assignments. If you have at least two years behind you working as a nurse, send your CV/resume to a recruiter at MedPro Healthcare Staffing. We look forward to hearing from you.

One of the many benefits of being a traveling nurse is that it can be a big boost for your resume in five different – and terrific – ways.

1. You can list on your resume the different facilities where you worked and give evidence of the different procedures, processes and ways of treating patients that you were exposed to. Through working at different facilities, you are able to learn multiple nursing procedures, which can add to your value to employers.
2. For example, one traveling RN may have worked at an acute care facility in Cincinnati, a medical facility known for its cutting edge care in treating burn victims. That same RN may also have worked at a progressive care unit in Miami, where he or she provided post-surgery nursing care services to cardiac patients. And that nurse may also have worked at a progressive care unit in Columbus, Ohio, providing specialty drug infusions. This nurse also worked in a cancer care unit at a CDE medical clinic in Madison, Wisconsin, where he or she gave chemotherapy for cancer patients, as well as PRBC, platelets and immunoglobulin infusions, and evaluating patient reactions to the treatment. Wouldn’t you sit up and take notice if that nurse’s resume crossed your desk?!
3. Your resume will also indicate the size of the facility you worked at, showing you have the versatility to work at a smaller facility, and the mettle to handle the stress at a larger facility.
4. Your resume will be able to give an indication of the various physicians and other healthcare professionals you worked with, showing your ability to handle different situations and work with different people.
5. Showing the different places where you worked as a traveling health professional shows that you have character traits employers value – that you have the energy and drive, adaptability, tenacity, and willingness to accept challenges.

Showing the different places where you worked gives employers an idea of your maturity. Someone who has traveled develops a broader perspective about the world, comes into contact with different people and customs and ways of doing things. Such a person is not one dimensional, but someone likely better at handling diverse situations and people, traits employers need.

Your experience as a traveling nurse will only make you more valuable to an employer when (or if) you decide you’d like to start working for just one facility again. It also makes you quite attractive as a traveler. The more traveling you do, the more skills and strategies you’ll learn, and the ever more valuable you become to your traveling service and its client facilities.

Interested in learning more about a career as a traveling RN? Contact a MedPro Healthcare Staffing recruiter today!

No matter if you work as a traveling nurse, OT, PT, speech therapist, pharmacist, or other traveling healthcare professional, you’re going to learn new skills, therapies and technologies that you never would have learned on the job if you stayed with one facility as a full-time employee. That’s just one reason why working as a traveling healthcare professional can be so good for your career.

What are some other ways you can grow in your travel career? Read below for some suggestions on where your work as a healthcare traveler can take you.

Naturally, your first thought might be that you’ll use your traveling career as a springboard to a promotion in a full-time position at a hospital or other medical facility. This definitely could be the case for you, due to the fact that healthcare travelers learn how to deal with all manner of people, move gracefully through facility “office politics,” grow their flexibility “muscles” and their ability to embrace change. Plus, as mentioned above, your skills will increase exponentially.

Many experienced travelers can become mentors, or even trainers, to other travelers while on assignment. Many facilities need several travelers at the same time in the same departments; so if you’re interested in mentoring other professionals, speak to your staffing supervisor about being placed on assignments where there will be plenty of other travelers. You’ll probably be supervising/mentoring in an informal capacity, at first. But keep talking to your staffing supervisor; traveling leadership opportunities while on assignment – as well as higher pay – do come up.

You also could speak to your staffing company about training/mentoring new travelers before they head out on assignment. You could do this between your own assignments. You could hold seminars and workshops on how to succeed as a traveler at the staffing service’s office, or you could hold these seminars remotely via video conference technologies.

And don’t forget working as a travel staffing recruiter yourself! Our industry is growing, and experienced healthcare professionals who have “been there, done that” would make a great addition to any travel staffing service’s team.

If you’ve been working as a healthcare professional for at least two years and are interested in learning more about how working as a traveler can advance your career, contact a MedPro Healthcare Staffing recruiter today!

One of the top reasons anyone decides to work as a traveling healthcare professional is to travel – of course!

While you travel the country or the region to your different assignments, you’ll undoubtedly want to explore the area near your assignment city on your days off. How will you decide which day trips to take?

You can ask your assignment colleagues for tips on great day trips, of course. They’ll probably give you terrific information on which sites are too touristy, which are closed during a certain season of the year, which are worth the long drive, and more.

But your smartphone also can help you decide on your free-time itineraries. Read below for some mobile phone apps we’ve found that can help you find great day trips while you’re on your healthcare assignment.

Truck drivers know. They know where the best cheap eats are. They know how to get around traffic snarls on major freeways. They know. So it might be wise to download apps loved by truckers. Here are some we found that are beloved by those who fly our freeways delivering the goods that we love.

For example, GasBuddy helps you find the gas stations with the cheapest prices in any area. It’s for iOS and Android.

Want to avoid slow freeways? Waze Social is another iOS and Android app that, according to its description, is a “fun, community-based mapping, traffic & navigation app, 40 million strong.” It reports, among other things, freeway and road closures in real time.

You’re going to want to make sure the weather is amenable to your day trip. This can be particularly important if, for example, your assignment is in a spot that sees you leave a valley and travel to the mountains. If snow arrives on the mountain, will you be able to get down? Good to know if it will snow then, yes? The Weather Channel offers a free app for iOS and Android.

Do you like to take hikes? Then check out About.com’s reviews of five hiking GPS apps for both iPhone and Android.

You’re going to want to remember your travels (tales for the grandkids someday?), and now you can place your notes and thoughts in a travel journal app called Trip Journal. The app, according to its websites “allows you to document vacation experiences and share them with your friends and family.” For iPhone and Android; the price is about 99 cents.

If you’re going on a road trip, you should make an effort to visit the quirky roadside attractions in and around your assignment city. RoadSideAmerica.com offers an iPhone app ($2.99 for one region), that allows you to find and visit what it calls the “historic landmarks and silly sights…from Washington to Obama.”

What travel apps have you found invaluable while on assignment? Tell us about them here.

If you’re at all interested in working as a traveling healthcare professional, don’t be shy: contact MedPro Healthcare Staffing today!

Arizona isn’t just about the desert. The Grand Canyon State has mountains, forests, the Grand Canyon (as well as several beautiful smaller canyons definitely worth a visit), rivers, mesas and much more.

You can ski in Flagstaff in the winter and head south along Interstate 17 to Phoenix in about four hours for some warmer weather.

If you have recent experience as a nurse in an Acute Care ICU setting and wish to work in Arizona for a traveling RN assignment, contact MedPro Healthcare Staffing for more details about this position.

You’ll need to have an active RN license and have BLS and ACLS Certification.

In this traveling nurse position, you’ll be providing patient care as well as support and education to your patients’ families. You’ll ensure that life support equipment – such as ventilators and feeding tubes – function properly. You’ll be administering IVs and inserting catheters as needed. You’ll also be bringing patients their medications. You must be able to perform CPR accurately and effectively.

Arizona’s southern half is where the heat gets blazing, with temperatures above 110 degrees F in the summer not uncommon in the Phoenix, Tempe and Tucson areas. The state’s northern half offers forests of Douglas fir, spruce, and pine trees. Much of the northern half is located on a high plateau (the Colorado Plateau). Flagstaff (7,000 feet above sea level) and Alpine (8,050 feet above sea level) offer the chance for skiing in the winter.

Arizona is one of the Four Corners States, touching Colorado, New Mexico and Utah at its northeast corner. It shares a border with California as well as New Mexico, Utah, Nevada, and even Mexico.

About one quarter of Arizona is made up of federal land that serves several Native American people, including the Navajo Nation, Hopi, Apache, Yaqui, Zuni, Pima, Mojave, Yuma, and more.

As a result of its Native American heritage, Arizona can lay claim to having the most Native American languages spoken in the Continental U.S., with more than 85,000 people speaking Navajo, and a bit more than 10,000 people speaking Apache.

If you have two years of recent experience as a Registered Nurse in an acute care emergency room setting, then pick up the phone and call a MedPro Healthcare Staffing recruiter for a traveling assignment at one of our top healthcare clients in Florida.

You must have an RN license from an accredited nursing program. You also should have experience in advanced cardiac monitoring as well as experience caring for emergent and non-emergency patients.

Your duties will include head-to-toe assessments. So you’re going to need to have considerable knowledge of normal vs. abnormal findings and reporting of those findings to the physician or the Charge Nurse.

You’ll be based in a healthcare facility in Florida. If you’re curious as to its actual location (inland near Orlando, within the Florida panhandle or on the Gulf or Atlantic coasts), contact our office for more information.

Virtually all of Florida offers you a temperate climate. If you’re tired of cold and snowy winters and hot and dry summers (if you’re from the southwest), and are looking for pleasant winters and hot and humid summers, Florida’s your place.

In addition, if you love water, you’ll love Florida. Even the inland areas of the state are less than an afternoon’s drive from either the Atlantic Ocean or the Gulf of Mexico. Lakes also abound in the Sunshine State.

Renowned the world over for its amusement parks, the Kennedy Space Center and for its many orange growers, Florida also is known for auto racing, golf, tennis and, of course, water sports.

Florida’s culture also is an amalgamation of the people who have come here. You’ll find touches of Native American, Hispanic, African American, and European American in its cuisine and architecture.

As for its economy, Florida’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is the fourth largest in the United States (according to a 2007 report by the Bureau of Economic Analysis, United States Department of Commerce). Florida’s major employers will be found in tourism, industry, biomedical and life sciences, healthcare, aerospace and defense, construction, and international banking.

If visiting one of the sunniest states in the country for a travel nursing assignment appeals to you, contact MedPro Healthcare Staffing today.

More than 15 percent of all healthcare workers in the U.S. in 2005 were foreign born (according to MigrationInformation.org). We believe that number has grown in the eight years since then.

If you’re a foreign nurse, PT, OT, speech therapist, physician assistant or other allied healthcare professional looking to work in the U.S. as a traveler, read below for information on how to obtain your license here.

The first step is to apply for healthcare worker certification (also known as a VisaScreen certificate). This will allow you to procure a temporary working visa or permanent residence in the United States.

Each state has its own licensing requirements. If you’re a registered nurse, you can take the NCLEX licensing examination in your home country, but most other foreign health professionals will have to come to the U.S. in order to take your profession’s mandatory licensing exam.

The licensing and immigration process is complicated. Your MedPro Healthcare Staffing recruiter will help you as much as he or she can, but you must understand that getting your license/Visa, etc. is your responsibility, not ours.

That said, check out this handy listing of important links you should read about the process.

The VisaScreen’s purpose is to ensure that any foreign-born healthcare professional who wants to practice in the U.S. has the equivalent training, education, experience, and English-language ability of a native-born worker. Also, as you go through the VisaScreen process, the organizations you’ll be using to certify that you have the required experience, education, etc., must verify that your foreign license is “unencumbered.”

If English isn’t your native language, you’re going to have to take and pass the following exams:

The Test of Spoken English (TSE) and the Test of Written English (TWE). You may take these tests from the following organizations:

• Test of English for International Communications (TOEIC)
• Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL)
• International English Language Testing System (IELTS)

Obtaining your VisaScreen, acquiring the necessary documents and taking the necessary tests are not uncomplicated. While it’s ultimately your responsibility to make sure the process is done correctly and that the proper paperwork/documentation is delivered, we highly recommend that you work with an attorney on this important process.

As mentioned above, we’ll help you as much as we can. We do hire foreign healthcare professionals and we hope you’ll contact us soon for more information on how we can help you become a traveling healthcare professional with us. Contact us today!

If you’re a healthcare professional interested in working as a traveler within the United States, read below for a brief description of what you can expect during our visa screening and processing.

Be aware that you must have passed any and all U.S. licensing exams for your profession within the state(s) you wish to work before applying for a visa.

First, your employer (that would be MedPro Healthcare Staffing or another travel healthcare service) needs to get labor certification approval from the U.S. Department of Labor. We’ll then need to file what is known as the Immigrant Petition for Alien Worker, Form I-140 with the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). We most likely will file the Form I-140 that designates you as what is known as “Employment Third Preference (E3): Skilled Workers, Professionals, and Unskilled Workers (Other Workers).”

Once the USCIS approves our petition, they send it to the National Visa Center (NVC). The NVC then assigns a case number to our petition. You – or your attorney – will then receive a “fee bill” that asks for payment in advance of all government processing fees for you. Once you pay the fees, the NVC will forward your packet to you or your attorney that contains biographical information forms that you’ll need to complete, as well as a list of documents you’ll need to submit.

Once you’ve submitted the forms, the NVC will schedule an appointment for an Immigrant Visa for you at the U.S. Consulate or Embassy in your country.

Applying for a visa here in the United States can take weeks or months. We’ll help you here from our end as much as we can, but the responsibility for applying for and working your way through the visa process is yours, not ours. You should research the process thoroughly. For more information, check out the NVC’s Immigrant Visa Processing site.

We urge any healthcare professional – nurse, physical therapist, occupational therapist, speech therapist, pharmacist, etc. – from a foreign country who can obtain licensure here in the United States and is interested in traveling to different assignments within the U.S. to contact a recruiter at MedPro Healthcare Staffing. We’d love to talk to you about our many opportunities. Contact us today.

Congratulations! You’ve just been called by a facility’s hiring manager for a traveling healthcare assignment. It’s time to prepare to “wow” the interviewer with your background, skills, experience, and gung-ho attitude.

Read below for some tips on how to perform well in an assignment interview.

Chances are your interview will take place over the phone. Many travel staffing companies hire healthcare professionals for assignments all over the country, so an in-person interview would be unlikely.

An important note: never forget that you’re interviewing the assignment facility’s hiring manager just as much as he or she is interviewing you. You’re going to evaluate the facility, its management style and more to see if it’s an assignment that meets your needs, just as much as the hiring manager is aiming to see if you’re a good fit for an assignment at his or her facility.

That said, the assignment facility’s hiring manager may be looking at more than one candidate, so you do want to present your best self.

If a hiring manager calls you without warning, it’s perfectly OK to ask to reschedule the interview for a time when you know you won’t be interrupted and in a place you know will be quiet. This also gives you time to prepare.

The interviewer may ask questions based on your application or from a checklist he or she has that details the skills needed for the assignment. It’s smart to have a copy of your application with you when you are on the interview call.

You’re going to be asked specific questions regarding your skills and experience.  A hiring manager is looking to find that your experience, skills and knowledge matches his or her needs.

Offer detailed answers, but don’t answer more than is asked. Keep your one word answers (“yes,” “no”) to a bare minimum.

What types of questions should you ask? How about:

• What are this position’s responsibilities?
• How many other travelers are in the department?
• Do you have travelers work in your department often?
• What is the patient-to-practitioner ratio?
• How many other (nurses, OTs, PTs, etc., depending on your profession) also work in the department/unit?
• How often are traveler assignments extended?
• Why are you hiring a traveler now?
• Are there any special skills you need for this position?

Hiring managers are looking for travelers who can learn and get up to speed quickly. They’re also looking for people with a can-do attitude and people who work well on teams. During your interview you want to show the hiring manager (with specific instances, if possible), that you’re that type of person.

Good luck!

If you’d like to be interviewed for traveling healthcare positions, send your resume/CV to a recruiter at MedPro Healthcare Staffing. We look forward to hearing from you.

Working as a travel nurse can be exciting and rewarding both professionally and personally.

It can also be very tough on you emotionally and physically. After all, you’ll be traveling (driving, flying, etc.) every few weeks, packing and unpacking, learning new “how things are done” at different assignments throughout the year, and will be far from your loved ones and friends (unless you take your family with you; which has its own challenges).

Read below for some tips on how to avoid burnout as a traveling nurse.

One thing you should consider is to take at least one month off between assignments. You needn’t do this between every assignment, but you should consider doing so after two or more back to back.

If you don’t want to take a month off, take at least two weeks. Relax. Have dinner with friends and family. Go to the movies. Get a massage. Read books. Take long walks. In other words, do whatever you need to do to really recharge your body and mind. You’ll be amazed how much this will help you stay alert and happy on your next assignment.

If possible, see if you can go home for a long weekend at least once during an assignment. This will help you reconnect with family and friends, and also allow you to relax in familiar surroundings.

Traveling is great, but experts on travel (even of the vacation kind) say that it can be quite stressful. You have to make new decisions every day (Which bus will get me to work on time? Where can I find a good dry cleaner?). While this can be fun, it also takes up a lot more energy than your day-to-day life does back home. That’s why making sure you get enough sleep, exercise and relaxation is critical to your physical and mental health.

If possible, take some classes in your assignment city. Take an art class or a dance class. Learn how to tap dance or perform improvisational comedy. Do something that takes you completely away from work.

Make sure you invite new co-workers out for dinner or a movie. Aim to make at least one relatively deep or close connection at each assignment. This will help keep you from feeling increasingly isolated and lonely, sure steps to burn out.

Learn stress management techniques such as yoga or meditation. They can help you stay calm and keep your stress manageable.

Exercise! Get out there and walk at least 30 minutes each day. If the weather’s cold outside, see if you can find a treadmill at your apartment complex or at a nearby gym.

If you’re an experienced travel nurse, what do you do to help you stay fresh while keeping burnout at bay?

If you’re an experienced nurse who is looking for a positive change, consider a career as a traveling nurse. MedPro Healthcare Staffing can place you in assignments in hospitals and medical facilities in cities all across the country. Send us your resume/CV today.