RNs are a critical part of the medical team treating a woman with cancer, which, you could say, is women helping women; according to the U.S. Department of Labor, women make up 91% of the nursing workforce. If you want to use your skills to help cancer patients, American Traveler Nursing Professional Resources page has a link to the Oncology Nursing Society web site.

No matter her specialty, RNs should recognize the symptoms of ovarian cancer (bloating, a feeling of fullness before meals, frequent trips to the bathroom, Pelvic and abdominal pain) to help their female patients, as well as know their own bodies well enough to stay healthy themselves.

The deadliest of all gynecological cancers, ovarian cancer and the research conducted everyday to beat it, is supported largely by The Ovarian Cancer National Alliance (OCNA), where teal ribbons and a host of products in the same robin’s egg blue (bracelets, necklaces, pendants, art and more) are devoted to raising money for increased research, clinical trials for which visitors to the site can use matching services, and a support system for women who have ovarian cancer or will be diagnosed with it within the year.

2009 brought over 21,000 new documented cases of the disease. If you watch testimonials of its survivors on the Alliance website, you’ll see that the disease—though more prevalent in women age 55 and older—has and will continue to be diagnosed in women of all ages, races and medical histories.

If colon cancer or breast cancer runs in your family, there is an increased risk. What can you do about it?  Just be aware of your body and its changes—as a nurse, you have a good idea of what is normal for you and what isn’t. The OCNA has tools that can help you do your due diligence, with a personal symptom diary and guidance manual you can download, to better consult with your doctor.

You can also get involved. Are you a nurse who wants to specialize in oncology and help cancer patients? American Traveler has RN jobs in Oncology in top hospitals nationwide. If you’re interested in New York travel nursing jobs in the springtime of 2010, you’ll be close to a very important event on May 1st in New York City, where there will be a Revlon RunWalk that helps secure donations and pledges for ovarian cancer research.

By visiting the OCNA website, you can subscribe to an RSS feed that provides continuous updates on positive advances in protecting women, and fighting cancer.

If you or someone you love is facing this disease, or is in any way touched by it, the site sells beautiful handmade bracelets, and will donate all proceeds; these bracelets are made of Swarovski crystals, sterling silver and teal fiber optic cat’s eye beads, and a sterling silver awareness ribbon. It might your head start this Mother’s Day—a gift to benefit thousands.

“Hospitals are looking for candidates with the most up-to-date and advanced certifications,” notes Deborah Bacurin, RN, clinical resource manager at American Traveler.

By pursuing advanced nursing training by earning additional credentials and certifications, you are proving yourself as a motivated individual who cares about keeping on top of the latest trends and education – and therefore, a top candidate for American Traveler’s travel nursing jobs.

This goes double for new grads and nursing students, who are finding that it is somewhat difficult to find the ideal job right out of school with basic nursing skills. Get as many certifications and credentials as you can, as soon as possible, advises Bacurin.

Also, do not expect the employer to reimburse you for this nursing job training (although it never hurts to ask!); view these credentials as prerequisites for top RN jobs.  The more certifications the better – and the more advanced, the better.

Here are Bacurin’s suggestions for certifications in their specialty that RNs should pursue:

• ED: PALS, NRP, ENPC, TNCC, CATN, CEN
• Critical Care: PALS, NRP, TNCC, CCRN
• Tele: PALS, TNCC
• Peds: NRP, PALS, ACLS
• M/S: ACLS, PALS, TNCC

For those looking to change nursing-job specialties or increase your skills:

• M/S to Tele, ED or ICU: Go for the trauma certifications (TNCC, CATN); plus  advanced-life support certs such as ACLS or PALS
• L&D or M/B: Go for AWHHON, NRP or S.T.A.B.L.E.

For more information on these and other licenses and education programs, see our Nursing Professional Resources page; also, you can always discuss your options with your American Traveler consultant.

Meanwhile, share your nursing-training experiences with fellow travelers. What certifications and credentials have you found to be most valuable in advancing your travel nursing career?

The product is Arizant Inc.’s Bair Paws, a layered-paper hospital gown that keeps the wearer warm by using a forced-air system to regulate the body temperature in the chilly operating rooms and other areas of the hospital.

These single-use gowns are easily self-regulated for temperature, and they also detach quickly from the hose that goes to the air pump – giving the patient more independence, and the registered nurses more freedom!  Bair Paws were also designed with lots of Velcro and ways of being opened, so that they can be adjusted in a variety of ways by doctors and RNs performing operations and other procedures.

The gown has other advantages, according to Arizant Web site:

“This budget-friendly gown can also help avoid the significant costs associated with the complications of unintended hypothermia, which has been shown to triple the rate of wound infection (SSIs), extend the length of hospital stay and increase mortality rates.”

About 1,700 facilities are using Bair Paws, with more being added every day, so the travel nurse is increasingly likely to encounter the gown on nurse jobs.  Therefore, it’s a good idea for RNs to become familiar with the product’s main features. Here is a patient Q&A for with basic facts about the gowns.

Nurses specializing in patient care relative to heart disease are already educated and wonderfully outspoken when it comes to heart disease and stroke prevention.

Are you a specialty nurse that already knows the facts on healthy hearts? Then we hope you’ll skip ahead to our hot travel nurse jobs from California to Florida, in departments like the ER, CVICU, CCU, ICU, PCU and more.

If you’re a nurse looking for RN jobs in the Critical Care fields of Cardiac Medicine and heart surgery, don’t delay! There are so many patients—and hearts—in need of your care!  Read the 5 fundamentals here:

The 5 Fundamentals of Heart Healthy

• Don’t let your health go up in smoke. Cigarettes and other tobacco products are among the biggest risk factors for heart disease; even low-tar, low-nicotine products and second hand smoke exposure can be dangerous. If you want a shot at optimal cardiovascular health, don’t smoke at all. If you need a smoke break, take a walk instead—and spare your body from exposure to more than 4,800 chemicals, which can lead to atherosclerosis.
• Get off the couch. When you’re physically fit, you’ve got a healthy weight to show for it, reducing your risk of conditions that strain the human heart, like high blood pressure, cholesterol and diabetes. Exercise and the endorphins it produces lead to additional payoffs—like stress reduction. Stress and burnout aren’t good for a nurse’s heart! While current guidelines recommend 30 to 60 minutes of daily “moderately intense” exercise, none of the experts are saying that anything short of that is useless. Any and all exercise is good for you—if you’re super busy, break down your work out routines into daily 10 minute sessions.
• Make a mad DASH (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension). This diet helps protect your heart. It means eating low-fat, low-sodium foods, shy on the cholesterol. The diet is rich in fruits, vegetables (think “5 a Day”), whole grains and low-fat dairy. The old limerick “beans, beans, they’re good for your heart” is true! Legumes, low-fat sources of protein, certain types of fish and Omega 3 fatty acids reduce your risk of heart disease. In DASH, “low-fat” is like a mantra, and specifically refers to limiting saturated and trans fats, which increase the risk of heart disease by raising bad (LDL) cholesterol.
• Weigh in on health and wellness—Almost everybody knows excess weight leads to conditions that court heart disease. Are you overweight? Check your Body Mass Index. Muscle mass is optimal, but spikes your BMI, so athletes are advised to take their BMI readings with a grain of salt. For those of us who have an average fat to muscle ratio, a BMI under 30 is a good rule of thumb. If you weigh too much, focus on bringing the number down. Studies have shown that even a 10% decrease in body weight can lower blood pressure, bad cholesterol and risk of diabetes.

• Let your doctor checkup on you. Annual screenings at the doctor’s office mean blood work, where cholesterol, glucose, thyroid function and blood count rule out or diagnose your individual risk for a variety of diseases. If you can’t make it annually, the Mayo Clinic recommends cholesterol screening at least once every 5 years.

Now that you know about your heart health, nurses may want to check out nursing career resources, where you’ll find more information on relocation, interviewing, city guides, PayPal—basically everything a traveling nurse needs to travel well.

So, that’s it nurses. Embrace more than just your valentine this February. Embrace your health every day of the year, it’s never too late for an ounce of prevention!

First, know that this trend is gaining steam.  Just this past December, three large RN unions (in California, Massachusetts and Maryland) merged to form the 150,000-member National Nurses United.  Its mission? Says Deborah Burger, RN, one of three charter co-presidents of NNU:

“We are going to make sure we organize every single direct-care RN in this country. RNs and our patients deserve to have a national nurses’ movement that can advocate for them.”

The NNU — which is seasoned, well-organized and well-financed – has a very convincing sales pitch.  Among the “pros” of unionization are more security for nurses, more clout when battling administrators, and higher pay and seniority protection for nursing jobs.  Thus, many facilities are accepting a nurses union — and many traveling nurses are choosing to join a union.

To join, or not to join?

Not everyone is a fan of RN unions. The “cons” include high union dues, having to comply with their bylaws and other regulations, and having one more layer of bureaucracy between the nurse and the patients. Says Deborah Bacurin, RN, clinical resource manager at American Traveler:

“I feel that I am a professional, and there is no room there for a union.”

As a company, American Traveler neither advocates nor discourages joining an RN union: The choice is completely up to each and every nurse.

If you are ever approached by a union recruiter while on assignment, or are in a permanent position, do your research before deciding. Get all the facts about the union and what they will do for you (their proven accomplishments), and then find out from your nurse manager and/or human-resources department what benefits the hospital offers without the union.  Only after comparing the information can you make a well-informed decision, Bacurin advises.

On-the-job considerations

Hospitals with an RN union can and do take travel nurses for temporary assignments. These contracts supersede the union requirements, so the non-union travel nurse is protected in the job.

However, that doesn’t mean it will be easy-going in such a facility. The level of hostility or acceptance from union nurses could depend on the stage of unionization in that particular hospital.

So what happens when the travel nurse feels like she is on the outside looking in?

Here are a few tips:

1. Befriend another traveler or two – empathetic pals are the best remedy.
2. Your nurse manager can be your best friend!  Make it a point to get to know him or her.
3. Grin and bear it on the job. Save the gripe sessions for your American Traveler Consultant; that is what we aim to do – guide you through any rough spots.
4. Concentrate on the patients. After all, helping them is the reason you are there.
5. Remember all the great travel nurse job benefits, and why you love it!

Skype.com proves we’ve come a LONG way since Alexander Graham Bell hooked us up with telephones. Travel nursing careers are compelling stuff, and as good a reason as any to utilize Skype’s services.

When traveling nurses want to share tales of their daily adventures, Skype (rhymes with pipe) almost makes it possible to literally “reach out and touch someone” for free!

Skype’s video conferencing feature was developed in January of 2006, and has gained much of its notoriety from use on the Oprah Winfrey Show. Talk show hosts and traveling professionals alike use Skype to do everything but clink coffee cups with the person they’re video conferencing; the quality is that crystal clear—in fact, examples of what Skype can do include, from Oprah.com, in progress music lessons, wherein the teacher and her pupil are on opposite sides of the world!

But Skype doesn’t have to be that high-tech. You can also use it to make voice calls over the internet and instant message anyone in your list of Skype contacts. Providing you have an internet connection, microphone and webcam, Skype’s features are free. Click here for a fast, free tutorial that shows you how to get started—and remember, you must be a member of Skype to use Skype! Make your first task on the site compiling a contacts list of friends, family and colleagues. For technophobes, it’s a brave new world; for traveling nurses who miss seeing their families, it’s an opportunity!

Travel nurse job benefits

Since traveling nurses enjoy free private housing, often with on-site amenities like well-equipped fitness centers, pricey gym membership isn’t something to worry about—with health experts recommending up to thirty minutes a day of good cardiovascular exercise, a treadmill just paces from home is a built in perk for travel nurses.

If you’re a traveling nurse with a wellness incentive you’d like to share with the world – well, please leave us a comment. We want to know how your fitness center compares with featured housing offered to travel nurses, and how you stay lean…but not mean. Cheers!