Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Back In the Saddle

It is with a heavy heart that I write today. After being a nurse for 35 years I thought that it would be great for a change if I tried to stay at home and try to get an Internet Business started. We found mentors and paid for classes and even got into the buying the latest whatever program to help us succeed. We have had a little success but nothing to compare to the amount we have paid out. The only sure thing it seems is to get back to work. We have waited as long as we could and now the money is near zero and it is time to put an infusion of cash back into our accounts.

The irony that we are dealing with right now is that we are ready to go back to traveling and there does not seem to be the jobs out there like there used to be. We have four of our best recruiters working for us and they have nothing. We have looked on sites that we go to for job listings and there seem to be all sorts of listings for OR nurses and then we call the agencies listing and there is nothing. The sites do not seem to be able to give out real time news. Maybe I am spoiled because of the Twitter, that gives real time information but the bottom line is that for the first time since I have been in the profession there is not the abundance of positions that we used to encounter.

The agencies seem to have Travel Assignments in California and so this morning we renewed our California licenses and now we have to call back all of the people and see if they have any contracts in CA like they did two weeks ago when we started to look. We were hoping to stay close to home. The cat hates to be on the road and there is nothing else that we can do but take him along.

So I guess that is it for my tale of woe and here is hoping that the economy starts to rebound so that the jobs come back and even better than that would be that my Travel Nurse Guide that I have been laboring over the last month will take off when it is launched.

Thursday, March 5, 2009

Is Travel Nursing Recession Proof

Finished talking with our favorite recruiter today. We have been in touch with him all week. It seems that our venture into Internet Marketing is not taking off like the guru's said and believe me when I say that it is not for lack of trying.

We have decided that we need to get back on the road in order to stay solvent. The nice thing about our second career is that it can be done anywhere. That was one of the romantic sides to getting involved in the first place. We could be on the beach somewhere and just plug some wireless connect card into the lap top and we would have the world at our door step.

We are not on the beach yet and it looks like the best way to get there right now is to take an assignment and request one on the seashore. Well, we have been looking at our little black book where all of our vital information is and we are delinquent in a few things. So he is looking and we are booking physicals and BLS classes. We said when they expired that maybe we should renew the stuff but then we thought that we might be sabatoging a mind set we had started to develope that would keep us from success. I don't think that we are eating crow. I think that we were lulled into thinking that we would be able to ba a success with the mentoring that we were going to be getting.

Any way we said to our Travel Nurse recruiter that we were needing to get back to the work force before we went bust. He knew what we were tying to do and was sad to hear that we had not been successful yet. The problem that he presented to us was that he was not getting very many listings for travel nurses. Now, for one thing I find that a little hard to believe but he said that the hospitals were being very guarded about hiring temps. Part of the reason was, he thought, that some nurses that had left the work force had returned. It is a real fact that hospitals are having to cut their budgets for hiring temporary personnel.Frankly I never thought that would happen.

My wife and I have worked for over 30 years apiece and we never had to worry about getting work. Hospitals were always hiring and so we never went without. Now I guess that the times have changed. Travel Nurses are an expensive commodity and I can certainly understand why there would be cut backs in that type of hiring. We are hoping that something shakes loose soon. We need to start making arrangements for things and we have to get the cat geared up for another trip. Something, I can say with certainty, that he is not looking forward to and will voice his opinion on it for about 100 miles.