Good information to know. Sounds like the staffing agency and the people who are suing are both at fault here. Reasonable assumption would be is they don’t need rehab nurses during a pandemic situation and I’m finding it hard to believe in 100k nursing jobs in Alabama. One of my coworkers daughters is a nurse and she’s working in Georgia because it pays better than Alabama.On the hospital side if we contract a traveler we expect them to be competent and experienced in whatever position they sign a contract for.
Under normal circumstances most travelers get one to three days of orientation depending on the system and environment, although some travelers have told me that they have had as little as 4 hours. Typically travelers will be getting the most stable patients on a unit and without any intervention that requires further competencies (CRRT, trauma room, fresh hearts, chemo, et cetera).
Requirements will vary with agencies and hospitals, but typically travelers are required to have at least one year of recent experience in whatever environment they are contracting for.
Some travel agencies (not a comment about this one in particular) and travelers have been less than honest about the experience that is being brought. For example I’ve had nurses who claim CV experience but actually worked with step down patients, ones who claim to have peds ED experience but had only floated for a few shifts, ones that claim level 3 or 4 NICU experience but only actually took care of feeders and growers on those units, and so on.
Like paramedic school nursing school only provides a basic amount of training. A lot of development goes into new grads just like with field training (at least in good hospitals or EMS agencies). If after nursing school a nurse only worked LTAC, SNF, school nursing, OR, NICU, home health, and so on then you can’t assume that they can provide competent adult med/surg care.