ON THE ROAD AGAIN Some travel jobs leave you with more baggage than you brought.

As a traveling OR nurse, you go where they send you. But there's not always a welcome mat when you get there, or at any point in your 13-week contract. Here are some signs that your new travel assignment is going to pile on extra baggage before you leave town.

• When you arrive at the hospital for your first day on the job, someone's waiting in the lobby for you with a pager. You're on call tonight.
• Instead of 'Hello,' your new co-workers say, 'So you're the traveler, coming to make all that money?' Then, any conversation you have with them eventually comes around to, 'If they paid us what they paid you, people would stay and we wouldn't have to spend all that money on travelers.'
• The surgeons will tell you to your face: 'Travelers travel because they aren't any good and can't hold a permanent job anywhere.'
• Two (yes, 2) surgeons are on leave. One is out for medical reasons. His foot somehow made contact with a cabinet door in an OR. The other was advised to take a vacation due to stress. Something about someone's hands getting in the way of the needle holder. As a traveler, you don't ask for details.
• You have to buy and launder your own scrubs, since the hospital can't afford to hire a service.
• The house you're renting is a bit on the small side. The living room is the bedroom. You have to rent a storage closet for things you don't have room for at the storage closet you're sleeping in. Never trust a staffing agency to book your living quarters.
• You're still trying to learn the EMR system on the afternoon of your second day at work. The fact that the IT guy himself can't get the system to recognize your user ID is no consolation when the old guard nurses look down their noses at you and tsk-tsk, 'She said she had OR experience.'

• You're called into the administrator's office after the first week and ordered to eat your lunch in the dining room with everyone else. The staff hasn't warmed up to you yet and this will help to build camaraderie, she says.
• People keep taking your lunch out of the refrigerator to make room for theirs if it's not in a 'designated lunch bag.' No plastic grocery bags allowed.
• The hospital's preference sheets don't actually tell you what the surgeons prefer. When his little favorites aren't written down anywhere, and you don't find out what they are until he asks for them and you don't have them, suddenly it becomes your fault. Hopefully it's not too long before you learn what that sheet is: the schedule for the bus you're being thrown under. Fool me once, etc.
• The charge nurse always assigns the traveler to the longest cases with the worst surgeons. You can use this to your advantage, though. These assignments build character (if you don't already have it), and requesting them makes you look badass. Also, fewer cases means fewer turnovers.

What comes around
In my 12 years as a traveler, or shall I say, a rental nurse, it's mostly been great. I've met people whom I'm still friends with. I've gone places I never thought I'd see. I'll admit there have been assignments where I've counted down calendars with big X's — it's a terrible thing to wish your life away — but I survived those places, I don't have to work with those people again and I'm told karma keeps a detailed address book. OSM