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Check out my interview with Leaderstat on how the coronavirus has affected my current locum tenens assignment.

https://www.leaderstat.com/knowledge-base/meet-sophia-the-traveling-np-part-2

I just finished reading a short book called “Nurses are Nuts” by Anthony Langley. The book illustrates all of the ways nurses help other disciplines in the medical field on a regular basis.

Nurses help doctors by putting in verbal orders or providing them with lab and imaging results that can easily be accessible in the patient’s chart. Nurses help phlebotomists with lab draws if the patient is a hard stick or if the phlebotomist is behind. Nurses help respiratory therapists with trach suctioning or helping set up ventilators. Nurses even help housekeepers by cleaning up spills or cleaning rooms to facilitate placing patients.

These are just a few examples of how nurses help other workers in the hospital. The book is a satire because it says nurses are nuts for allowing themselves to do everyone else’s jobs. Nurses are often short staffed and no one can really fill in that role and provide extra support. As nurses we are used to helping others, but by taking the time to fulfill other people’s job responsibilities, it is taking time away from our own tasks to our patients.

My only wish with this book is that there should be an extra chapter about how nurses can solve this problem or stand up for themselves. Yet, perhaps that will be a sequel.

Anyways I highly recommend this book to all of my fellow nurses. It was an interesting and easy read, that I quite enjoyed. I am sure you can certainly relate to most of the book. You can find it for sale on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Walmart, or Target. Let me know what you think once you’ve read it!

Once again my California nursing licenses expired. I decided it was time to renew them because I would be open to returning there for work this year. I had one of the agencies I work with renew them for me because it costs over $500 for all of the licensing renewal fees. California is known for having steep fees.

The good part is that the process was extremely fast. I had received an email that my licenses were renewed within 5 days of doing the applications and submitting payment. Well I have to clarify that the agency licensing representative did all of the actual work.

The annoying part is that I noticed my licenses expire again 12/2020, at the end of this year! I find that to be ridiculous considering we just paid over $500 just to have active licenses for 10 months vs the standard 2 years.

If you plan on doing locums work long term, I highly recommend you getting a California license. There is always plenty of work there and depending on the location, the pay can be pretty high. Keep in mind the original licenses can take 4-6 months, but fortunately the renewal is quick.

With the stay at home order, non-essential workers are forced to stay at home – whether they are able to work or not. As a result, plenty of my friends and family have tons of extra time on their hands. They are constantly asking me what I am up to and how I am keeping busy.

I have to remind them that I am still working. Although we are not seeing the majority of our patients in the clinic, I am still going to the clinic to do telehealth visits. My job wants us all in the clinic in case some of our patients need to come in for acute reasons (such as Congestive Heart Failure or COPD exacerbation). Thus, my week days are still as busy as before.

Even though we aren’t seeing as many patients in the office, many of them are constantly calling with questions all day. So, I feel more tired than usual when I go home after work.

With my free time, I have continued to be physically active. I take walks outside by the river. I also use the gym in my apartment building (there is typically only 1 other person in there).

I continue to read books, maybe at a quicker pace than usual. I can finish a new book within a week. Of course, I am binge watching TV Shows such as Ozark on Netflix and Outlander on Starz.

Every other weekend it is someone in my family’s birthday, so we all gather together on Zoom to celebrate. I have been catching up with my friends via text and phone.

I continue to work on my blog. I write entries far in advance. I listen to podcasts regularly: some about financial freedom, others about entertainment (such as the show The Bachelor).

I am an introvert so I don’t feel completely bothered by this social distancing. However, I have to admit that I do miss my family and friends and am looking forward to seeing them soon!

What have you been doing to keep busy during this strange time?

Most health care providers have been preoccupied with the coronavirus lately. Yet, last month Florida Nurse Practitioners received good news. Advanced registered nurses in Florida officially gained full autonomy!

The bill proposing independent practice for nurse practitioners was finally approved by both the House of Representatives and the Senate. Governor Ron DeSantis was quick to sign this bill into law. This has been something we have been striving for for many years.

Under this new law, nurse practitioners with at least 3,000 hours of experience under a supervising physician can practice independently. No more collaborative agreements with a physician after proving competency. This is extremely beneficial to nurse practitioners that want to own their own practice without having to pay a physician to just supervise them “on paper”.

I am really happy that my home state, Florida, is moving in the right direction when it comes to nurse practitioners!

I have really admired how well my current workplace has led us through the coronavirus pandemic. As soon as the coronavirus was spreading in China, my job formed a Covid19 committee. This committee kept us up to date with the most recent news.

Once the coronavirus started spreading in the USA, we prepared to start screening all of our patients via phone when confirming appointments. We put a ‘gatekeeper’ at the front door to check everyone’s temperature when walking into the building – both patients and employees.

We also converted the majority of our office visits to phone visits within a week. Since our patient population are all 65 years old or older with multiple comorbidities, they are high risk for complications from the virus. Thus, we needed them to stay home as much as possible.

My clinic meets on a daily basis about the coronavirus and the impact on our clinic flow. For instance, we learned how many test kits we have and when we should utilize testing. We discussed screening patients and when we should try management at home versus sending them to the emergency room.

In addition, we have weekly corporate wide virtual meetings to discuss the latest research findings about the virus and treatment options. Management has been clear about which employees can work from home and who needs to come into the clinic. They have been flexible with employees that need to work from home due to lack of child care or have health risks making them susceptible to the virus.

I respect that my job always has a plan in place and are quick to adapt. I have spoken to a lot of my friends that also work in healthcare, and how there has been limited guidance from their jobs. Many people think that healthcare is a secure career during this time, but actually it is not.

Many physicians have had to close their offices as non-urgent visits and elective surgeries are cancelled. These offices will remain closed for an indefinite period of time. As a result, there will be limited income for both the practice and their employees.

I have a friend that is a Dentist who was furloughed. Other peers that are specialty physicians were let go from their practice. Not to mention many older internists resigned from the hospital due their risk of health complications from the coronavirus.

I believe there is only security in the healthcare field if you are a nurse or physician that works in the hospital and does not rely on elective procedures. I have seen the demand for RN’s in NYC increase drastically. They are willing to pay ICU travel nurses the income of a physician!

Since my current job does not practice fee for service care, we are financially secure. We bill through Medicare advantage plans. Meaning we are paid a lump sum of money per patient per quarter from the health insurance – not per visit. In that case, we are able to manage our patients virtually and still profit from that. In fact, the profit from last year is already on hand to pay for costs of this year.  

I have been really impressed working for this company during such a time of chaos. The fact that they are also financially secure, and will not be laying off any of their employees is a plus. With the inevitable recession coming, I may have to rethink my work goals. 

In my previous post, I talked about some options I was considering for my next assignment. In reality, as the coronavirus continued to spread in the USA, I felt like I couldn’t make a decision until the very last minute. That meant my option working in the retail health clinic was out the window, because credentialing takes about a month.

I declined the offer to work at the community health center in San Diego, as I mentioned in my previous post, I was not interested in returning there. Ironically, they were begging me to accept the offer.

That left me with two last options, a primary care office in San Diego and a community health center in Chicago. The week prior to my current assignment ending, I started wondering if it was a bad idea to travel at all. I knew my current assignment would be open to me extending, since they didn’t have a new provider coming in to take my patients until summer.

Originally, I absolutely declined their offer to extend my assignment in Kentucky. Both the complexity of the patients and their “sour” attitudes had me looking forward to the end of my assignment.  

Once the coronavirus reached Kentucky, we converted the majority of our appointments to phone visits. If I decided to extend, the job would be somewhat easier since there would be few face to face visits. I figured the easiest thing to do was extend my time in Kentucky.

When I followed up with the primary care office in San Diego, they no longer had a need because I was initially going to be covering a PCP military leave. Due to the covid 19, all military travel was cancelled. I also inquired about the position at the community health center in Chicago. They were still trying to figure out how they were going to proceed with visits so could not confirm if they wanted to move forward with the assignment.

Overnight, my traveling options were no longer existent. I thought about just going home (to Miami) like I had originally planned at the end of this assignment. Although it would have been nice to be close to family, I knew I would go stir crazy being stuck at home due to social distancing. It was also impossible to tell how long social isolation/state shut downs would last. Thus, I didn’t want to be out of work for more than a month.

I contemplated going back to my last assignment in Chicago, where I had a panel of patients I wanted to return to. But there was no point in going back there just to do phone visits. And again – this would require me to travel.

In conclusion, I decided to extend my assignment in Kentucky for another month. I was a bit worried that my job would decline the extension, thinking that anyone else could simply cover my patient panel by doing the phone calls. Yet, I think the phone visits would be challenging for a provider that didn’t know my patients already. My job agreed to an extension and the other PCPs were happy I was staying. I also had an extra month left on my apartment lease that the site would be responsible paying for whether I stayed or not.

I am not sure what will happen once my extension ends. I am taking it day by day just like the rest of the world. But I am grateful to be able to continue providing care to such a vulnerable population.

This post isn’t about the threat of the coronavirus and what you should be doing to protect yourself and others. This post is about how the coronavirus has affected my life specifically as a traveling nurse practitioner.

I was working during my last few weeks in Kentucky when the coronavirus became a global concern. My first worry was that I wasn’t going to be able to go to Europe for spring as I originally planned. I was in much need of a vacation so was very bummed about limited travel. Not only was there a ban on travel from Europe, but museums and tourist attractions would be closed in those countries anyways.

The more time passed, the more of a threat the coronavirus became in the USA. I started wondering what this would mean for me as a traveling nurse practitioner. They started cancelling large events, NBA games, and even closing restaurants and bars. Trying to contain the virus, there is so much up in the air.

As I searched for my next assignment, I felt like I couldn’t commit to a particular assignment at the moment. I was unsure if by the time I became credentialed they would limit domestic travel or even quarantine certain states. I also started becoming nervous about finishing my current assignment.

Would I be stuck in Kentucky for an indefinite amount of time? Will I be able to travel home in Miami to at least be with my family during such a questionable period?

As a traveling nurse practitioner, I don’t buy things in bulk. Meaning, I don’t go to Costco and buy tons of food for a month. Since I am always transient, it makes more sense to buy a little at a time. As a result, I wouldn’t be prepared if I had to self-quarantine for 14 days. When I had two weeks left with my current assignment, I did make sure to buy enough food for two weeks. But if I somehow got stuck here for longer, I hope I will be able to find items that I need since the grocery stories continue to be practically empty.

This virus has also led to economic repercussions, due to cancellation of flights, hotel stays, events, and small businesses. Fortunately, in healthcare there will always be a job for me. Yet, with so much unknown going on between the spread of the virus and risk for going into a recession, transitioning to a permanent job is looking more attractive to me. 

It has been over a year since I have had a phone interview. This is because I kept extending when I was in Chicago and ended up working at the same place for 9 months. Then my next assignment was with the same company in their Kentucky location, so there was no need for an interview.

Fast forward to now, in which I am in the process of looking for an assignment for the spring. I am used to interviews being brief and the offers being quick. Surprisingly, the few jobs I have chosen to interview for haven’t been that efficient. At one given time I was considering 4 locums opportunities.

The first job was for a retail health clinic. In this case, the interview was pretty quick and they made an offer right away. The second job was a family health center that doesn’t use locum tenens providers frequently. This was apparent when during my first interview with their HR representative, he wanted me to verify if my Medicaid number was active in that particular state (a state I had worked with previously and billed for Medicaid). He clearly isn’t aware that I do not do my own credentialing for insurances.

That same job requested I have a separate interview with their medical director. In my head I was like – really? Two interviews?? I guess I have been in the game for too long because I am spoiled with the typical one brief phone interview. Not to mention that they requested this phone interview be done over facetime. After an exhausting day of work, I am not trying to look presentable over the phone. I was against the facetime call mostly because I do not want to be pre-judged. Since I look younger than I am, I feel like I often have to prove that I am ‘smarter’ than I appear.

The third job, was actually for the community health center I had worked previously in San Diego, CA several years ago. If you have followed my journey, you may recall that I didn’t particularly enjoy working there. However, I did love living in San Diego! My recruiter told me she doubted they would even need an interview from me.

I wasn’t too surprised when I learned they did want an interview, since I last worked there 4 years ago. The first interview was with someone from HR. I was a little turned off when she told me new patients are scheduled at 20 minute visits. And even more turned off when she mentioned that they expect you to see walk-ins during no-show appointment slots. In that family health center, there are ALWAYS walk-ins.

She then wanted me to interview with a few clinicians on a later date. I considered cancelling because I was already unenthusiastic about the job. But I decided to move forward with the second interview to keep my options open.

I have never been so humiliated during a phone interview! During the second interview, I was asked if I spoke fluent medical Spanish, in which I replied yes. So they gave me a patient scenario and had me respond in Spanish as if I was speaking to the patient. I was appalled! I am a nurse – the most honest profession there is. Why would I lie about speaking another language?

Then they proceeded by asking me clinical questions. For instance, giving me various patient scenarios and asking what I would do. I reluctantly answered their questions but couldn’t wait to get off the phone. Not only had I worked there previously but have also worked in over a dozen other places since then. So I am positive I am a competent nurse practitioner.

Luckily, my last interview went well. It wasn’t a scheduled interview. In fact, the HR manager called while I was at work, and I called him back when I had the chance. This isn’t my preference but each place functions differently. The HR manager was very friendly and appreciative. He also requested a second interview with some of their physicians. This second interview kept being delayed because of the time difference and the physicians were always behind schedule.

They finally reached out to me on a Sunday evening unexpectedly. Once again, not ideal but I appreciate the physicians being welcoming and not grilling me like the previous interview.

I forgot it can be a full-time job doing all of these phone interviews. Any interesting interviews you would like to share from your locum tenens experience? 

The patients from my clinic in Louisville, Kentucky are the most complex patients I have ever seen. A new patient will easily have 30 diagnoses and 20 medications. These are geriatric patients where the majority of them still smoke. There is a lot of substance abuse, including cocaine and alcohol. The patients also have poor living situations, with plenty of them coming to the clinic with either bed bugs or roaches crawling on them and their belongings.

It’s been quite challenging caring for this population because of their social issues. Fortunately, we have an amazing social worker and case manager that help support them. The patients come from poor socioeconomics backgrounds and unfortunately do not take care of themselves.

As far as medical illness, lets just say everyone has Heart Failure, COPD, Chronic Respiratory Failure, Coronary Atherosclerosis with Angina Pectoris, Chronic Kidney Disease, Hypertension, Hyperlipidemia, Major Depression, Hepatitis C, Polysubstance Abuse, Major Depression, Chronic Pain or Osteoarthritis etc.

I saw a patient that was 2 weeks post-op for a small bowel obstruction and incarcerated ventral hernia. Apparently, she never cleaned the wound, refused to let home health into her home, and continued to smoke. By the time I saw her, her wound had reopened, there was a large amount of purulent drainage, strong foul odor you could smell a mile away, and dead tissue surrounding the wound. She absolutely refused to go back to the hospital where she had the surgery. She blamed them for her complicated wound.

I gave her some antibiotics and told her I would see if another surgeon would see her, although I knew it was doubtful. She wanted to leave because she needed to get to work (yes with that horrible wound), so I made her follow up the next day. Within 1 day the wound was 5x worse and of course no other surgeon would accept her. Luckily, I was able to convince her to go to the emergency room where she had the original surgery because she clearly needed debridement and IV antibiotics. Of course, it took a 20-minute conversation to convince her. I had to scare her and explain that she will eventually get peritonitis and/or sepsis and die.  

We offered to call an ambulance for her but she insisted that she go home and eat first. I was flabbergasted that she even had an appetite with that foul smelling wound. The entire clinic reeked after she left. Eventually she made it to the hospital and they took her to the OR for immediate surgery.

This is just one example of the type of patients we have. A lot of them have attitudes. One lady started yelling at me just for suggesting she start taking a medication for diabetes. And when I offer them the flu shot, they don’t proceed with the usual “no thanks, I had problems with the flu shot before.” They literally raise their voice and start yelling at me about how they wont take the shot and a 5 min ranting fest of why not. I won’t even mention the challenges of weaning them off opioids or declining to refill their narcotics. Let’s just say there is a reason gabapentin is a controlled substance in the state of Kentucky.

Although taking care of this patient population has been exhausting, I have learned a lot. It also makes me appreciate how good I had it with my patient panel in Chicago. I continue to be impressed at how the physicians at my clinic care for their patients despite all the above challenges.