An Australian Nurse Reflects On Her Time With Continental Travelnurse

Nursing is a tough, demanding job no matter where you do it. So we at Continental Travelnurse don't downplay the challenges involved in spending time in another country and adapting to their way of getting the work done. Travel nursing isn't just an adventure: it's also work. We know the rewards far outweigh the challenges: that's why our nurses always excel and are asked to stay on at the places they work. And that's why virtually all our nurses extend their stays and sign on for new stints. In short, they love it, challenges and all.

Here are some thoughts from an Australian nurse who chose to work her entire travel nursing time at London's St. Thomas's, the oldest teaching hospital in the world. Bianca shares her feelings about the work she did there for two and a half years.

The ITU at St. Thomas's is the busiest ITU I have ever worked in and I have to say in terms of work load it is also the hardest I have worked in. But if you are willing and very keen to put your hand up and put your best foot forward you will learn so much. I miss ITU at "Tommies" so much. I made great friends and learnt so much -- so much more than I ever imagined -- but I worked bloody hard and put in long hours.

When I first started it was difficult to settle in as a new member of staff. I think that's because they don't know you and have so many untrained ITU staff that they want to check you out first. It's very stressful [for them] not knowing if a new member of staff is going to need to be carried or not, especially with how busy it can get sometimes. I personally found it great once I settled in, which didn't take too long for me.

From my point of view, if you're willing to work hard and potentially be used a little, maybe not intentionally but occasionally miss one of your breaks -- which I often chose to do as my patients were often the sickest on the unit -- you will enjoy your time there. It is frustrating, but so are all jobs. The main thing is to not go there thinking the work is like home, because it isn't. And that is probably the main key point to stress. The nursing union in OZ is pretty strong and has done a great job to get the working conditions we have. But the working conditions in the UK are not so great. The thing i liked best at Tommies is the working relationship with the Medical team; I felt my opinion was valued slightly more over there.

-- Bianca

Thanks for sharing your thoughts Bianca and giving nurses a realistic portrayal of working at St. Thomas's. That's what you can expect from Continental Travelnurse: straight talk, informed advice and a tremendously fun and rewarding experience.

Find out more at our main website at ContinentalTravelnurse.com.

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Continental Travelnurse: Explore The Possibilities

Travel nursing truly is not just a job. It's an adventure in your career and in fun: nurses can work in the UK during the week and quickly and inexpensively fly to Paris or Rome for the weekend. (Plane travel is surprisingly cheap in Europe and going from London to Paris is like going from New York to Boston, more of a long commute than a big journey). Then, between stints they can get a rail pass on the great trains and explore Europe at length. During their jobs, they will also find great attractions both in the city they're based in and the surrounding areas.

Once you try travel nursing, regular old stay-at-home nursing seems positively staid. Why not take advantage of your excellent education and desirable qualifications to explore the world? Why not seek out work AND fun in England, Ireland and Scotland while sampling the rest of Europe at your leisure? Why not avoid the short-sighted, short-term day agencies and indeed reject agencies altogether in exchange for the long-term, goal-oriented and fun-oriented atmosphere of Continental Travelnurse, a London-based company with decades of experience in travel nursing and links to the top hospitals in the UK? Why not turn your job into an adventure?

Contact Continental Travelnurse today. Go to our main website for more information and complete contact info.

Friendly Words From One Of Our Travel Nurses

It always happens to the people who work with Continental Travelnurse. Virtually every nurse we place is asked to go on staff at the hospital they're at. That shows the high quality of nurses we recruit. And so many of the nurses let us know how much they loved their time with our company and hope to travel nurse again. Here's the latest comment we've received from a nurse that one of our staff members sent an email to just checking in to see how she was doing:

So lovely to get an e-mail from you. I have been very remiss in not getting in contact before now and like you, I don't know where the last year has gone. Not a day goes by when I don't think of wanting to be back in Cheltenham. I just loved it so much and would very much like to return maybe next year. I have resigned myself to being in NZ this year as I have had two more grand-daughters this year -- four grand-daughters now in total!!!!! I want to spend this year with them and also I am re-decorating the house. Lots to do but I so miss the life I was having this time last year. -- Phillipa

Thanks for writing, Phillipa. We love to hear from our nurses. To learn more about Continental Travelnurse, visit our main website.

Happy Nurses' Day!

HAPPY NURSES' DAY 2010!!

Celebrating Nurses' Day is an opportunity for everyone around the world to remember the valuable contributions that nurses make to society.

Nurses' Day is celebrated on 12 May each year, as a tribute to the amazing work of Florence Nightingale who was born on that day in 1820. This year we have even more reason to celebrate her pioneering work as it is also the centenary of Florence's death on 13 August.

Visit Nurses' Day 2010 for more information and activities that are happening throughout the UK.

We at Continental TravelNurse want to join the friends, family and patients who are saying thank you to our nurses. Nursing is a difficult, challenging and rewarding job that is as much a vocation as it is a job. You are an intimate and valuable part of people's lives during some of the most wonderful and painful moments in their lives. That's why Continental Travelnurse isn't just a business to us; it's a chance to work side by side with the women and men who are selfless in their sacrifice and devotion to helping others.

Thank you for letting us be a part of your work.

Have a wonderful day,

From the entire team at Continental Travelnurse.

Join In The Travel Nursing Fun Now!

One famous ad slogan in the US was, "It's not a job; it's an adventure!" That could easily apply to travel nursing. People who become nurses already welcome challenging and exciting work that can change lives for the better. So it's not much of a leap to travel nursing when everyone knows that nurses are in demand all over the world. And that leap should take you right to Continental Travelnurse. (Here's a link to our main website with loads of info and contact details.)

But when top nurses in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the US think about nursing in the UK -- be it London England or Ireland or Scotland -- they often google words like "nurse" and "agency" and "job." But Continental Travelnurse is NOT an agency. It's much, much better.

Based in London, Continental Travelnurse places nurses in prime hospitals with great housing nearby for three month terms -- all at the nurse's discretion. The advantages of Continental Travelnurse are endless.

Nurses who come into a health care setting via an agency are always day-to-day. They wear separate uniforms and are always playing catch up. The staff never knows if the nurse will be back the next day or in what department and treat them accordingly -- like newbies who aren't worth bringing up to speed or getting to know.

Nurses from Continental Travelnurse are part of the team. They always wear the same uniform as staff (and -- shh! -- are usually even paid more than staff). They are placed in a certain unit and become part of the team. Because they will be there every week for three months, everyone's job is easier. The nurse can be welcomed and brought up to speed. The nurse can be depended on. And the nurse can depend in turn on a stable, positive environment where they are a welcome addition, not just an extra pair of hands for a day that can be as much a burden as a help.

Nurses who come from an agency have no past and future. They can't develop a relationship with their coworkers or get into a rhythm.

Nurses who come from Continental Travelnurse are present and accounted for. They do develop a great relationship with their coworkers. In three months, they can both get into a rhythm and keep in mind the pleasing knowledge that they'll be free to choose from any option they want in the blink of an eye. (You'll be surprised how quickly 12 weeks can pass when you're doing a job you enjoy in an exciting new environment.)

Nurses who come from an agency are rarely valued highly; they simply don't have time to make a good impression.

Nurses who come from Continental Travelnurse are always valued highly. It is no exaggeration to say that virtually every nurse we have ever placed is asked to come on staff when their three months are up. If that doesn't interest the nurse, they're asked to extend to another three months in the job. Nurses who feel they still have a lot to explore in the area are free to accept this eager offer. Nurses who want to try another region of the UK or just want to take a few weeks or months off to go touristing can do that as well.

Nurses from overseas who try to find work through an agency in London or other UK city will face daunting paperwork that those agencies simply are not equipped to help them with. They're basically on their own.

Nurses who come to Continental Travelnurse find a highly trained staff quite adept at steering them through the redtape that must be hurdled in order to practice their career in the UK. It's far less burdensome a task when you have people who've helped hundreds of other nurses dot the "i's" and cross the "t's" in order to gain the license that makes them such a highly desired asset to every health care establishment in the EU.

Travel nursing truly is not just a job. It's an adventure in your career and in fun: nurses can work in the UK during the week and quickly and inexpensively fly to Paris or Rome for the weekend. (Plane travel is surprisingly cheap in Europe and going from London to Paris is like going from New York to Boston, more of a long commute than a big journey). Then, between stints they can get a rail pass on the great trains and explore Europe at length. During their jobs, they will also find great attractions both in the city they're based in and the surrounding areas.

Once you try travel nursing, regular old stay-at-home nursing seems positively staid. Why not take advantage of your excellent education and desirable qualifications to explore the world? Why not seek out work AND fun in England, Ireland and Scotland while sampling the rest of Europe at your leisure? Why not avoid the short-sighted, short-term day agencies and indeed reject agencies altogether in exchange for the long-term, goal-oriented and fun-oriented atmosphere of Continental Travelnurse, a London-based company with decades of experience in travel nursing and links to the top hospitals in the UK? Why not turn your job into an adventure?

Contact Continental Travelnurse today. Go to our main website for more information and complete contact info.

NEW ADDRESS! SAME GREAT COMPANY!

We’re moving! Anyone who has visited the Continental Travelnurse headquarters in London knows that we have been bursting at the seams for quite a while now. Finally, after long and careful consideration, our offices are moving a few blocks away to larger quarters at 11 Bruton St.

The most important fact is that nothing has changed for our clients and nurses: you can reach us by phone and email by all the current methods and we will continue to provide you the best possible service. Too many businesses place a premium on a flashy address and posh amenities. You can always spot a new business poised to fail when a company spends lots of money on fancy digs.

Continental Travelnurse knows our most important investment is in our nurses and clients. That’s why we began in a tiny basement office and then after a year of sustained success moved into a top-floor location on a modest side street only a few steps away.

We’ve been building our business ever since and for quite a while the Continental Travelnurse staff has been cheek by jowl with one another. But our commitment has always been to managed growth: we didn’t want to move again until it was absolutely necessary and we were able to find the right location at the right price.

That time has arrived and we’ve moved a few blocks away from our current spot. In fact, we can step a few yards away from our new entrance and see all three of our past and present locations. In a way, that captures the spirit of Continental Travelnurse: we want to stay rooted in the practices that have brought us success, grow when it’s prudent and possible and always keep in sight what matters most -- the clients and nurses that are at the core of what we do.

But to be honest, it HAS been quite crowded. The previous location was a comfy spot located on the attic floor of a tiny building and had very low ceilings, which meant our voices echoed all over the room when staff were on the phones.

The best aspect of the new address? Leslie Giltz, the founder and head of Continental Travelnurse, laughs and says, “Shannon can stop hovering around the copy machine so she can hear herself talking on the phone.”

Bruton Street, like virtually every part of London, has some remarkable history. Queen Elizabeth II was born just a few doors down at 17 Bruton Street on 21 April 1926. Perhaps she’ll even come to call someday!

Go to our main Continental Travelnurse website to learn more.

Wedding Bells For Two Travel Nurses

Continental TravelNurse guarantees a great experience for all the travel nurses who want to work, make good money and see different parts of the world and have fun doing it. Of course, we can’t guarantee you’ll meet the love of your life – but it has happened. Though they both came from Australia, they’d never met before coming to the UK and working with Continental TravelNurse. Kirstie Clark (formerly Barwick) explains. (She’s pictured on the right with husband Jon.)

“I’m from a small county in New South Wales,” says Kirstie. “Jon is from Newcastle. They’re about six hours away from each other by car. We didn’t know each other and we both took travel nursing jobs in Edinburgh, Scotland.” Kirstie was looking to work at a fulfilling job in her field, save some money and travel around. Romance was not on the agenda. “No, that was the last thing on my mind,” she laughs.

“We kind of hung about with each other for a month or two,” remembers Kirstie. “We did tourist-y things like going to Edinburgh Castle. Six weeks into it, we started to get serious.” Jon loved that they both took deep satisfaction in their jobs – and having fun. “She has a keen interest in healthcare and we both feel the same way about the importance of helping people,” says Jon.

Then Kirstie describes what can only be called a classic Continental TravelNurse experience. They used the money they’d saved up during their two assignments to go skiing in Austria. During their third assignment in Oxford, the new couple took weekend trips to Paris and elsewhere. “Then we used the money we saved during that assignment, took trips to Greece and Spain and then we flew home, says Kirstie. “We came home in May 2006. I moved to Newcastle. He proposed to me on New Year’s Eve. We were going on a cruise around Newcastle Harbor when he asked me and we got married March 8, 2008.” And Continental TravelNurse was there in spirit. “I wouldn’t have met her any other way,” says Jon.

Go to our main Continental Travelnurse website to learn more and get contact information.

Our Nurses Take The Stage

Continental Travelnurse wouldn’t be the thriving company it is without the terrific nurses we work with from around the world. That’s why we always take good care of our nurses and love to hear from them. Here is some of the feedback we’ve received from our friends and partners, the nurses.

“Just a wee note to thank you all so much for your individual efforts throughout my time with Continental Travelnurse – nearly six years, on and off! You all do a fantastic job and I loved being in London."
Angela

“Just wanted to say thank you for all your help and support. You are a great company and a lovely bunch of people. I’d have no hesitation in recommending you to other nurses. All the best."
Kellie

Go to our main Continental Travelnurse website to learn more and get contact information.

Our Newest Client: Guys & St. Thomas's

The newest client of Continental TravelNurse is also one of the oldest and most prestigious hospitals in the world. Indeed, Guy’s and St. Thomas’s are two of London’s – and indeed the world’s – best-known teaching hospitals.

St. Thomas’s is old even by the standards of London, a city where a 170 year old pub can be casually referred to as “the new pub” because it replaced an even older pub on the same site. But St. Thomas’s has a 900 year history, respectable by anyone’s standards. It’s been around since the 12th century and was named after Thomas Becket (the martyred saint who stood up to Henry II) from the get-go or within its first century. A few hundred years later, St. Thomas’s was rededicated to Thomas the Apostle, hence the odd spelling of its name.

Few hospitals can claim the lineage of this institution. Florence Nightingale opened the first nursing school in the world at St. Thomas’s in 1860, just to name one notable fact. It’s been the site of filming for everything from a “Doctor Who” episode (in which St. Thomas’s was seen transplanted onto the moon) to the acclaimed zombie movie “28 Days Later.”

Guys Hospital is a relative youngster founded in 1721 (that’s about 600 years after St. Thomas’s!). But the famous doctors who have walked through its doors include people who have discovered Hodgkin’s lymphoma, Addison’s disease and -- more positively – penicillin. The poet John Keats was even a student at Guy’s. (Maybe he should have studied more – Keats would die of tuberculosis.)

Together these institutions remain vibrant, top-notch and truly historic hospitals that are a memorable privilege to work at.

Go to our main Continental Travelnurse website to learn more and get contact information.

Great Housing For Our Nurses: A Top Priority

Continental TravelNurse is the only UK travel nurse agency to offer comprehensive housing to its clients – a fact that both the nurses and the clients who hire them absolutely love. For Housing Coordinator Jane Richter, her job only gets easier once the nurses have moved in.

“Two people just moved into a flat and said it’s better than their own home,” laughs Richter, who has been the Housing Coordinator at Continental TravelNurse for two years.

“People are always concerned about housing and expect the worse. Then, when they’ve been in the location for an assignment and are about to head off on a personal trip, they try to bargain with us to make sure they get the same exact location.”

In other words, nurses are skeptical that the housing provided will meet the high standards the expect and we guarantee. And then once they’re in it, they often convince themselves it’s a fluke. “They really believe none of the other flats will be as good as what they get,” she said.

But of course they are because Continental TravelNurse knows the importance of good housing for both the nurses and the clients who use them. “The feedback from the nurses to the hospitals about how good their housing is is always good and that makes the hospitals even more confident about working with us,” says Richter.

Continental TravelNurse achieves this high standard by checking out locations personally whenever possible and by building long-term relationships with housing agents, grading each apartment continually and always keeping in mind convenient transport to work. One future innovation Richter has been building on is to create a sort of travel nurse cul de sac when she’s found a prime location, such as a site in Edinburgh. It has excellent transportation to two different clients and the flats are very nice. “We’ve got three or four flats there,” says Richter. “It’s a lot of fun for the nurses to have a bit of a community there and it just makes sense. We’ll be doing more of that down the road.”

Indeed, that communal social network is a big draw for travel nurses and Richter loves to pair off people into the same flats that she knows will get along. “Two nurses, Amy and Bianca, have become best friends and they’re on their third or fourth assignment and they always insist on rooming together.

One key to Richter’s job as Housing Coordinator is managing expectations. Ironically, nurses before their first assignment tend to have really low expectations (they can’t imagine housing chosen by someone else will be acceptable to them) and really high. “Americans are used to really big houses and Australians are used to having a lot of land around their homes,” explains Richter. “So sometimes they find housing that –in the UK – may be really high standard but doesn’t match what they’re used to. But when it’s clean and nice and in a great location for both work and fun, they soon realize what a good job we’ve done.”

And that job never ends. Richter describes a typical day where she might juggle three different issues and keep three different nurses happy as a good one. And the scope of her job is challenging and fun.

“It goes from the biggest issue to the smallest detail,” says Richter. “From negotiating a lease agreement to getting a washing machine that’s gone on the fritz replaced the very same day. It’s never, ever boring.”

Go to our main Continental Travelnurse website to learn more and get contact information.

Our Nurses Take The Stage

“It was a wonderful experience made easier by Continental Travelnurse and its support. Knowing you had a job and accommodations was brilliant as a major stress relief."
Sarah

“I had a blast! Thanks for everything! You guys are great; I hope we get a chance to work together again soon.”
Leah

Go to our main Continental Travelnurse website to learn more.