Friday, January 23, 2009

2nd Edition

I have been working diligently, since my wife and I retired, to create an ebook that would tell of our travels and also bring up points that proved to be snags for us along the way. I am close to putting that book out for the public to buy and use.


The book has major chapters on Agency and Recruiter selecting, Housing and many more.
We have included the problems that we encountered with licensing and dishonest recruiters, what happened and how we moved to never let that happen.


There are amusing anecdotes and there is a trail of "You know you are a nurse when" jokes through the chapters. We are hoping that it will be popular because of content but also because it is written for travelers they can download and keep it on their laptops and not have to carry around some more articles to take up space in the car. It also appeals to the "Greening Movement" because it is a pdf file and not another waste of a perfectly good tree.


Keep your eyes out for the launch date and hope with us that it will meet with success and popularity!!!

Thursday, January 15, 2009

How do I begin?

What a tale I have to tell. The kids had proven that they could take care of the house. We needed to make good wages. Our check book was running on vapors and going back to any of the local hospitals we felt was a real dead-end. The decision to be a travel nurse was also made easier when I discovered that I had been black-balled from one of the hospitals because I was a rabble rouser. I have been an OR nurse for 30+ years and frankly, I have never known an OR nurse that knew how to keep their mouth shut. I was always critisized because I was not very tactful. I cut right to the chase and let people know how I felt. I think that it is better to know where you stand with someone that to be constantly guessing.

Traveling took us into new frontiers and every 13 weeks we changed jobs and addresses and I could leave behind another group of people, that one way or the other I had pissed off.

Contract nursing is quite a challenge and my wife, Sandi, and I encountered a multitude of things that could go wrong. The "what can go wrong, will" seemed to govern us for quite some time until we learned to anticipate all of the issues that could arise.

Traviling in the 21st Century was made quite a bit easier because of all of the technology available. When I was a travel nurse in the mid-90's cell phones were about 15 lbs. The internet was a pipe dream and as a result of those two things, I felt more "like Daniel Boone" exploring around the countryside. Now I don't step out of the house without a printout from Mapquest.