Travel Nurse Finds Adventure, Excitement...and Love on the Road
By Melissa Wirkus, contributor
Emily Pinho, RN, had only been working for 18 months when she was ready to take her career as an emergency room nurse on the road.
Ready for a change from living and working in Missouri, Emily called leading travel nurse agency American Mobile Healthcare, an AMN Healthcare company, to see if they had any assignments available for RNs with her experience level. Sure enough, they found her an assignment, and now, two-and-a-half years later, Emily is still actively working as a travel nurse.
Traveling since January of 2009, Emily decided to share her adventures with the world when she entered the Traveler’s Journey Video Contest, sponsored by Travelnursing.com and American Mobile, and featured on social media sites Facebook and YouTube.
Her video, entitled “Travel Nursing: Emily is Never Bored as an American Mobile Travel Nurse,” is a montage of Emily’s adventures and escapades over the past few years which include her first-time experiences with the Pacific Ocean, Grand Canyon and even Alaska’s Northern Lights.
“I got the emails about entering the video contest and had forgotten about it until I got an email on my phone when my boyfriend and I were heading up to Malibu for a camping trip,” Emily said. They filmed most of the video on their trip, and she later used a video editing application to transform her raw footage into one of the semi-finalist entries. “My little brother composes music so I used his music and put it on there. It was really fun.”
Putting the video together gave her a chance to reflect on all of the reasons she has managed to stay so excited about her chosen career path.
Emily took her very first travel assignment in Los Angeles, and as fate would have it, she ended up meeting her boyfriend on the beach. She then took an assignment in Fairbanks, Alaska, which she recalls as “the most amazing experience of my life.”
Since returning from Alaska, Emily has been able to continue her career as a travel nurse while staying near to her boyfriend by taking travel assignments within a 50-mile radius in the Southern California area. Travel nursing has also given her the opportunity to learn new skills and bring those skills to other facilities.
“Since I’ve become a travel nurse, I’ve become much more knowledgeable and have a larger view of health care in general,” she explained. “Traveling to different hospitals, even if they are in the same area, you find that everybody does things just a little bit differently. But at the same time, ERs are exactly the same as far as what patients you get, what procedures you get--which is comforting.”
“I’ve learned different medications at different hospitals, and new ways of doing things. It’s cool to get in a hospital and find out what they’re really good at and how they do it. I’ve taken things I’ve learned at one hospital and taken it to the next and said, ‘I’ve seen this done really, really well and this is how we can improve things here.’”
Emily said one of her favorite parts of being a travel nurse is the flexibility it provides.
“It’s nice being able to end an assignment when I want and head home for the holidays or go on a road trip with my sister for a couple weeks in between assignments. It’s really nice not having to request off a year ahead of time to go on a trip with your family.”
Travel nursing has taken Emily on the adventure of the lifetime, and helped her find love, new friends and new nursing skills.
“I’ve never been without work when I wanted work. It’s such a great experience, you get to meet so many people,” she said. “Everywhere I’ve gone I’ve become best friends with the staff and everyone is always so happy we are traveling there.”
Watch Emily’s video here to get an inside look into her life as a travel nurse.
In the 2011 Traveler’s Journey Video Contest, sponsored by American Mobile Healthcare and TravelNursing.com, nurses were invited to share their experiences, adventures and stories about travel nursing in a two-minute video. The top 10 videos were posted on the American Mobile Facebook page in August, and the public was invited to cast their votes. After more than 1,700 votes, Seth Snowden was chosen as the Grand Prize winner of an iPad 2 and a $500 gift card. Share in all of the semi-finalists’ journeys with travel nursing on American Mobile’s YouTube channel.
© 2011. AMN Healthcare, Inc. All Rights Reserved.