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Anyone who says that staying fit while traveling can be easy and simple probably has never actually been a road warrior.

As a healthcare traveler, you’re staying in one place for weeks at a time, so you should find it about as easy to get your fitness efforts in as regularly as you do at home, but should be as easy never means it will be easy.

So, read below for 10 tips on how to stay fit while on your travel assignment.

1. Chances are that the apartment complex where you’ll be staying has some kind of exercise facility/weight room. Use it.
2. You may be working second or third shift, so the apartment complex’s exercise room shouldn’t be as busy when you have the time to exercise. Take advantage of this.
3. If you don’t like to use weight room/exercise facilities and if you’re driving to your assignment city, pack some lightweight dumbbells of 5, 8 or 10 pounds. This allows you to get some weight training in at your convenience in the privacy of your apartment.
4. If flying, pack resistance bands and an inflatable exercise/balance ball. These can be just as effective as weights when it comes to improving/maintaining your fitness.
5. If packing any fitness equipment is out of the question, don’t forget your own body weight. Exercises such as pushups, squats, lunges, etc., can be an absolutely terrific way to stay in shape. No muss, no fuss, no extra stuff in your suitcases!
6. If you’re interested in a body weight regime, Active.com recommends the following: March in place or perform jumping jacks for about three minutes as a warm-up. Then do 10-50 reps (depending on your fitness level) of pushups, lunges, dips, squats and sit-ups/crunches. Do the exercises quickly, with little rest between them. Repeat at least once or, preferably, two more times for a total of three circuits. This will give you a great aerobic as well as body-weight (as in weight training) workout
7. If you’ve a favorite video exercise program, bring it. Chances are the television in your apartment will have a DVD player. Or bring a small DVD player with you.
8. Are you a runner? Bring your running shoes! You’ll undoubtedly find a new colleague who’s also a runner at your assignment, and you can ask him or her for tips on where to run and running events taking place in your new city.
9. Bring your running/walking shoes and walk/run during your lunch hour.

10. If all else fails, bring your walking/running shoes and walk everywhere you can. To the market, throughout your apartment complex, up and down your facility’s stairs. Aim to get the 10,000 steps in that are recommended for maximum fitness each day.

What tips can you offer fellow travelers that have worked for you? Don’t be shy: write them here!

No matter your fitness level, if you’re an experienced nurse, PT, OT, speech therapist, pharmacist or other allied health professional and you’d like a career as a traveling healthcare professional, send your resume/CV to MedPro Healthcare Staffing. We look forward to hearing from you!

Working as a traveler offers you the chance to connect with many people as you travel to different hospitals or healthcare facilities.

But you may not be able to connect with your colleagues to the depth you’d like during your short-term assignment.

Social media such as Twitter can help you stay in touch with past colleagues and also expand your professional network.

Read below for tips on how to expand your Twitter network.

• Look for the names of people you know and follow them. They’ll often follow you back as a matter of course.
• Twitter actually makes this very easy for you. Go to the “Who to Follow” tab at the top of Twitter’s menu and then click on “Friends.” Choose your email provider and/or your network on LinkedIn, and Twitter will identify your contacts so that you’ll be able to follow them.
• Speaking of followers, follow the experts in your field. Look for those individuals in your field who have a lot of followers themselves and aim to interact with them. The idea is to engage in conversation with them and some of their followers. It may take a while to get a response from someone who has a lot of followers, but if you regularly comment, re-tweet their comments, etc., you should grab their attention. If you add something to the conversation, they’ll soon enough start “tweeting” to/with you. This could happen much faster than you think.
• When on assignment, tweet about it. That is, place the hashtag symbol (#) in front of the name of your facility (#CedarsSinai, for example) and others who are tweeting about the Los Angeles-area hospital will see it and perhaps comment as well.
• You also can do the same when attending a conference, seminar or CE program.
• Re-tweet the messages of those you follow. Many folks will follow those who re-tweet their posts.
• Patience truly is a virtue when it comes to growing your Twitter following. Engage with your followers and those you’re following regularly (you should spend at least 10-15 minutes a day on Twitter). Your influence and the number of your followers will grow exponentially if you do so.
• Remember the 80-20 rule. If you’re looking to grow your professional network, most of your tweets should be professional in nature (the 80 percent). The remainder could – and really should be – of a more personal bent.

For other great resources for travel healthcare professionals, please get in touch with us today!

Traveling far from home (or at least at a location that’s too far to go home after your shift) is one of negatives of working as a traveling healthcare professional.

Aside from taking your family with you (which is hard), going home on weekends (costly and time intensive) or just accepting assignments that will bring you home at night (you may not be able to go on many assignments), read below for some ideas on how to stay connected to your friends and family while on a travel assignment.

• If you don’t have an account already, sign up for Facebook and ask your friends and family members to “friend” you. This will allow you to read all their updates and post your own. This is a great way to stay aware of the goings on in their lives and staying involved. Facebook has an app for smartphones, in case you don’t take a laptop with you.
• You’ll probably want to know what the weather’s like back home (especially if you live in Michigan and have an assignment in Florida in February; all the better to gloat). The Weather Channel has an app for your smartphone so that you can check the weather anywhere at any time.
• If you’re not a fan of Facebook, consider joining Google+. The app for the social media platform allows you to use what it calls Huddle to send quick group messages to everyone who is in your “circle.”
• Skype allows you to chat face to face for free with anyone who also has the Skype app on their smartphone. You also can call or text anyone with Skype’s low rates using Skype credit.
• Love Twitter. TweetDeck recently updated its mobile app. You can customize your news feed for updates from all of your Twitter, MySpace or Facebook contacts in one location.
• Want to schedule all your tweets and Facebook postings? You can using HootSuite’s mobile app.
• Take pictures with your smartphone and then instantly download them to your Facebook or other social media feeds with the Instagram app. This allows your family and friends to see what you’re up to pretty much just as you’re up to it.
• If you’d like to send instant messages to your family and friends, download the LiveProfile app. LiveProfile allows you to share updates in real time to your family and friends.
• Want to know what’s going on in your neck of the woods? Check your local newspaper’s website to see if it has an app for smartphones. If not, check out Patch.com’s mobile app, a site that provides news coverage and other information for more than 800 cities and towns across the country. If your town isn’t covered yet, just wait; Patch is growing.

If you’re an experienced traveler, what apps do you use to stay in touch with the folks back home? What other tips could you offer to help new travelers stay connected?

Whether you’re an experienced healthcare traveler or you’re looking to explore this exciting career, if you’re an OT, RN, PT, speech therapist, pharmacist or other allied health professional, send your resume/CV to MedPro Healthcare Staffing. We look forward to hearing from you.

As a professional healthcare traveler, it’s imperative that you begin work at your new assignment by “hitting the ground running” as much as possible. That’s why it’s so important to not only pay close attention to your orientation/onboarding at any assignment, but to also ask as many questions as you deem necessary.

Read below for some more tips on how to make the most of an assignment’s orientation.

First, your travel staffing firm should have some basic orientation information for you before you even leave for your assignment. In addition to the facility’s location and your assignment supervisor’s name and contact information, your staffing manager should let you know what kind of orientation you can expect at the assignment facility. Your staffing manager also should either make sure all the necessary paperwork is completed prior to your assignment arrival or work with you to make sure all documents are complete.

Once you’re on assignment, you should expect to receive a short overview of the assignment facility’s policies and procedures, a tour and, of course, a short introduction to other staff (and possibly other travelers).

Once in your unit or department, you’ll be given instructions on “the way it’s done here.” That is, how the unit/department performs charting, documenting, sending/receiving faxes, where to go to find supplies (or whom to ask), etc.

Once the official orientation is over, it’s up to you to fill in the blanks/get answers to questions you may have. For example, if you’re a nurse on assignment at a hospital, introduce yourself to the charge nurse and go over the shift routine and assignments with him or her. You also might want to introduce yourself to the unit secretary, as he or she can be a great resource for questions you may have about the phone system, order entry/retrieval, etc.

Naturally, you’ll want to take plenty of notes during orientation. You also shouldn’t be shy about asking for a list of frequently dialed numbers such as the pharmacy, physicians, laboratories, etc.

Realize that your first two weeks at any assignment probably will be your most challenging. Never be afraid to ask questions, no matter how minor you may think them to be.

Whether you’re an RN, OT, PT, speech therapist, pharmacist, or other allied health professional, if you have at least one or two years’ professional experience and want to explore the great career available to you as a traveler, contact a MedPro Healthcare Staffing recruiter today.

If you are a traveling healthcare professional, sooner or later you will encounter a difficult patient, one who is rude, demanding, or combative. And even though this is a patient who will more often fight you than listen to you, you are still obliged to provide him with the best care you can. So, how do handle a situation like this?

Lanette Anderson, a nursing professional, says you need to put yourself in the place of the patient, to think about the situation in which he finds himself. He is ill or injured or requires therapy, he may be uninformed, he is frightened. In short, he did not choose to be where he is, but you did.

Also, often with a difficult patient, his belligerence may have a cause unrelated to his particular illness or therapy. There may be mental illness, substance abuse, other personal problems that the patient does not have the wherewithal to handle effectively, and so his frustration manifests itself in his combativeness. The patient may have a poor opinion of healthcare in general, or may be having financial problems. Handling the difficult patient in this case involves attempting to find out what these other factors may be so that they can be addressed before the situation becomes worse.

Another thing to do is to show the patient that you are taking a real interest in him. Make eye contact when you talk to him, and listen to what he is trying to tell you. If you show impatience – crossing your arms, looking at your watch, cutting him short when he is talking – you will only make matters worse.

Continue to provide information to the patient, to make sure he understands as much as possible what is going on, as well as support and reassurance.

With a difficult patient there also are steps you need to take relating to risk management. One is documentation. You need to document thoroughly any adverse events that occur in the patient record, and remember to be as objective as possible. In the event of any legal action, having such documentation will be a tremendous asset to the hospital or medical facility at which you’re assigned.

Also, with a combative patient, you need to pay attention to any legal threats he might make, and take those threats seriously. You need to inform your supervisor, so that hospital or facility staff can take action to resolve any issues that are upsetting the patient before litigation enters the picture.

And if you are dealing with a patient who really makes you uncomfortable, as a last resort, check with your assignment supervisor; you may be able to have the patient reassigned to another healthcare provider.

If you’re an experienced nurse, OT, PT, speech therapist, pharmacist, or an allied healthcare professional with a yen to travel and care for patients either across your state or across the country, send your CV/resume to MedPro Healthcare Staffing. Contact us today so that we can chat about the many travel opportunities available.

Traveling healthcare professionals get a double whammy of exposure to illness. First, you’re (usually) working around sick people. Some of them incredibly ill. Second, you’re traveling a ton, riding on planes, trains and automobiles, becoming exposed to all manner of people – and their colds and flu bugs.

Read below for some tips on how to stay healthy and work around this double shot of ick that’s aimed right at you.

The best advice is applicable to anyone who works in an environment where you are surrounded by people, whether they’re healthy or not:

1. Wash your hands frequently. You know this already, of course, but it always bears repeating. Wash your hands after caring for patients. Wash your hands after greeting people. Wash your hands after cleaning a patient room. Wash your hands after hugging your family hello when you return from work.
2. Wipe down surfaces with disinfectant. If people touch it, see if you can wipe it down.
3. Keep a small case of disinfectant wipes in your purse, satchel or briefcase, in order to keep them handy.
4. Drink water until you feel your insides are going to float away. Water removes toxins from our bodies, so flushing your system with this miracle liquid is a great way to keep illness at bay.
5. Exercise. Get that heart pumping! It’s best if you could get your heart rate going at a good clip for 30-60 minutes five or six days a week. At bare minimum, get your heart pumping at least three times a week for 30 minutes each session.
6. Watch the junk food. Aim to eat as healthfully as possible. That means double up on fresh fruits and vegetables. Watch the saturated fats and the foods with processed sugars, such as cookies, cakes, pies, sodas, and other junk foods.
7. Speaking of food, as you say no to the bad stuff, you might consider eating nature’s own flu and cold fighters, such as zinc supplements, which are known to help arrest colds; garlic, which might boost your immune system; and vitamin C (of course!).
8. Cut back on alcohol and if you haven’t done so yet, quit smoking.
9. When traveling, you’ll want to wash your hands frequently and keep those disinfectant gels and wipes nearby because you know that people generally wash their hands even less frequently than your healthcare colleagues, so you need to double up on the preventive measures. You also might consider taking Airborne or some other type of cold-prevention supplement (research has found that these don’t help keep you from getting sick, but many individuals swear by them), as well as Zicam or another zinc supplement.

What tips can you offer your fellow travelers to help them stay healthy this winter? What home remedies do you swear by?

If you’re an experienced RN, OT, PT, speech therapist, pharmacist, or other allied health professional with a yearning to travel to different healthcare facilities across the country for short-term assignments, contact a recruiter at MedPro Healthcare Staffing. We look forward to hearing from you.

If you are a traveling health professional, you know that winter can be a particularly challenging time of year to work, not just because of illness, but also because of travel conditions.

What can you do to stay safe on the road during the winter months? Here are a few ideas.

The first piece of advice may sound a bit obvious, but should not be overlooked. When traveling, make sure you know the route you will be taking to get to your destination. Then also do a little research to find out what the weather forecast is for your trip. The U.S. Department of Transportation operates a number of hotlines with information about road conditions. It would be a good idea to make a list of these numbers and check in occasionally.

You also should have a safety kit in your car for emergencies. The basics you need for the kit include cell phone, ice scraper and brush, blanket, flashlight, candle, matches, portable weather radio, can of lock de-icer, and cat litter. The litter is a good substance to help give your car traction over ice.

You also should check your tires to make sure they are in good shape and inflated properly. You especially need to keep an eye on the tire pressure because cold weather reduces it. The tread on your tires should be at least one-eighth of an inch deep. Good snow tires with lugs will handle adverse weather conditions better than all-weather tires. It also is a good idea to know how to attach snow chains to your tires should conditions warrant it.

You should learn what to do when your vehicle loses traction and starts to skid. Most people panic and jam on the brakes, which is exactly what you shouldn’t do. When you start to skid, you should steer the car in the direction you want to go, and keep your foot off the brake.

During longer trips, it’s always a good idea to take frequent rest stops, and this is especially true in winter. Driving during the winter is more stressful, and therefore more tiring, than summer driving. So, make sure you take a break at least once every hour.

Finally, you need to drive more slowly in the winter, at least 50 percent slower in bad weather conditions. But don’t slow down too much. Your car still needs to have the momentum to make it up and down grades that are covered with snow.

Are you a veteran medical traveler during winter? Do you have any winter driving tips you could pass along?

Whether you want to travel to U.S. cities near ski slopes, or you’d prefer to hit the beaches of Florida or southern California in winter, if you’re an experienced RN, PT, OT, speech therapist, pharmacist or other allied health professional with an itch to see the country, contact a recruiter at MedPro Healthcare Staffing today.

Looking for ideas regarding what to do between your travel assignments? Read below for ideas for when you tell friends and family about the “Things I did on My Time Between Assignments.”

Take a well-deserved vacation. That’s the beauty of working as a traveling healthcare professional: you work when, or if, you want. If you want to take a three-, four- or even six-week break, go ahead. Let your staffing manager know that you want to take some time off and let him or her know your next availability date.

Take some continuing education classes. Many healthcare professionals find it very hard to keep up with CE requirements because they must do so while working 40-plus hours a week. But not you. You can take those CE courses any time of day during the day, any day of the week, any month of the year, without adding to your time constraints.

You also could combine vacation and CE needs by participating in a CE course in a vacation spot or participate in a CE course on a cruise ship.

Have you been wanting to get certified in a new skill within your field? Like your CE courses, taking a few weeks off to become certified in a new skill or technique can be done easily when you have a career as a traveling healthcare professional.

Many people go into the healthcare professions because they want to help people. Your break between assignments can be the perfect opportunity to give back to others in a purely selfless way by volunteering. Want to go on a mission to a third-world country? You can now take the time. Want to help rebuild a part of the Appalachian Trail? Now you can. The time between your assignments can be as busy – or not – as you wish. Doing all the things you “wish you had time for,” but could never find the time to do due to a regular work schedule at a regular employer.

Honey-do lists are also a favorite activity of many travelers. Need to get the house painted? Done! Need time to retile the bathroom floor? Consider the time yours. Need to help move a parent to a new home or a child to college? Take the days or weeks you need to do it right.

On the flip side, if you want to work with very little break between, just let us know. Traveling health professionals are in great demand. You can be as busy as you like, whether you want to take a month off between each and every assignment, or you want to just take a weekend for yourself before heading out to a new facility, here at MedPro Healthcare Staffing, we’ll do all we can to accommodate your work/break needs. Contact us today!

Imagine going to school for your needed continuing education (CE) credits while on a cruise ship or in a tropical location!

Read below for several opportunities to do just that!

PESI Healthcare is offering a three-night cruise to the Bahamas in March 2013 that will provide nurses with a CE seminar on “Assessing, Diagnosing and Treating Abdominal and Cardiac Anomalies!”

The non-profit organization also is offering a CE cruise for nurses to Alaska in the fall as well as an autumn cruise to New England and Canada (details coming soon).

MCEConferences.com offers CME conferences in many different vacation spots, including Las Vegas, Walt Disney World, Disneyland, Jamaica, New York City, Park City (Utah), Hawaii, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, the Bahamas, and in many other desirable locations.

The Professional Education Society offers several CE conferences and cruises at destinations all over the globe. For example, the society is offering a 12-day cruise to Australia and New Zealand in January for doctors, nurses and dentists.

Italy more your style? The society is offering a nine-night CE cruise from Venice to Monte Carlo in September.

Pharmacists might be interested in a seven-night cruise to the Mediterranean in January by Continuing Education, Inc. The cruise’s CE conference on “Update on Indications, Interactions and Complications in the Use of Pharmaceuticals” provides one unit of CE credit.

What can you expect on these cruises? Well, in addition to the cruise or vacation resort itself, most vacation CE programs:

• Allow you to bring a spouse or a friend
• Let you sleep in a bit before class begins (most seminars start at 8 a.m. or even 9 a.m.)
• Classes will be either full days or half-days (check with the seminar host)
• Provide you with plenty of opportunities to go ashore (cruise) or enjoy the resort where you’re staying
• If going on a cruise that goes somewhere not in the U.S., you’ll need a passport.

Have you ever gone on a cruise or to a remote vacation spot for a CE conference or seminar? What was your experience like? Do you feel you received a strong education in the seminar’s topic?

If you’d like to travel for a living (just not on a cruise ship) as a pharmacist, nurse, OT, PT, speech therapist or other allied health profession, contact a recruiter at MedPro Healthcare Staffing. Hospitals, clinics and other medical facilities all over the country are looking for your critical skills for short-term assignments (typically 13 weeks in long). Contact us today.

 

We certainly don’t have to tell you about the wealth of resources online for traveling healthcare professionals. Yet it’s easy to feel a victim of information overload because there are so many sites. How do you know which to look at or how to find the better sites?

What Information Are You Looking For?
For hints and help with travel and relocation:	Some links on our own site to sites such as HealthcareTraveler.com, to Moving.com, and more.
Taxes and financial questions:	Links to tax and financial resources we feel are particularly helpful to our traveling healthcare professionals, including IRS.gov, gsaadvantage.gov, Turbo Tax software, and more.
Licensing questions PT, OT and speech therapists:	Links of use to OTs, PTs and speech therapists are here.
Licensing questions for nurses:	Licensing links for nurses.
Licensing questions for pharmacists:	Licensing links for pharmacists
Licensing questions for laboratory or respiratory therapists:	Licensing links for lab and respiratory therapists.
Helping you find friends:	Several blogs may interest you, including: Travel Nurse Aim, a blog by a traveling nurse who writes about her experiences; AllNurses.com, one of the Internet’s largest travel nursing forums MyPhysicalTherapySpace.com, a spot where PTs can talk and learn from one another; MeetUp.com, to help you find people while on assignment who have the same interests and hobbies as you do; and more.
Healthcare resources of value:	Click here for links to several healthcare resources of value, including Nursyz.com, the website for the Department of Health and Human Services; the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services, and more.
Sites to help you have fun while on assignment:	We’ve put together a compendium of sites we think you’ll enjoy, including WonderHowTo.com, a site that offers free video training on just about anything from knitting, to piano playing, and more; CouponCabin.com, which scours the Web looking for deals; and other entertaining sites.

What online sites do you think would be helpful to healthcare travelers? Send us links!

We also hope you’ll send MedPro Healthcare Staffing your CV/resume. We have dozens of traveling healthcare opportunities at sites all across the country. Contact us today.