What It’s Like… to Work as an ICU Travel Nurse

What It’s Like… to Work as an ICU Travel Nurse

While you may have heard about what it’s like to work as a travel nurse, have you ever thought about travel nurses who work in the ICU?

Daisy Award-winner Deji “DJ” Folami, RN is an ICU registered nurse from Oklahoma with Cross Country Healthcare , who specializes in critical care nursing and travel nursing. He told us what it’s like to work as a travel ICU nurse—and why he loves doing it. What follows is our interview, edited for length and clarity.

“I was just simply blown away by their [ICU travel nurses] level of confidence, their can-do and go-getter attitude, and their all-around knowledge, that the motivation to explore travel nursing came easily.”


DailyNurse: How did you get interested in being a travel nurse—especially one working in ICU?

DJ Folani: I joined ICU nursing after one year of being a Med-Surg nurse because I was fascinated by the skills and organization of the code team.  Same degree, just higher levels of training and knowledge. After one year in ICU, I met a few travel nurses. I was just simply blown away by their level of confidence, their can-do and go-getter attitude, and their all-around knowledge, that the motivation to explore travel nursing came easily. In 2016, I started my journey as a travel or contract nurse, and I have never looked back since.

Explain to me briefly what a travel nurse specializing in ICU does? How long do you tend to work in any one facility?

A travel nurse must be an experienced and adaptable person. However, a travel nurse who specializes in ICU is expected to be dynamic and ready to meet challenges when circumstances change.

For example, most ICU travel nurses specialize in medical-surgical ICU but may be asked to float to a cardiovascular or neuro ICU to take care of patients within their scope. Simply put—same skill set, different unit or different protocols.

Typically, a travel nurse works as a contract employee at a facility. Each contract can be a period of 8 to 26 weeks, renewable up to one year. After that one year is up, a break is required up to 30 days, depending on state laws. If the facility wants to continue with the nurse, they will offer to renew the contract.

 How and why did you get into becoming a travel nurse? Did you have to sign up with one specific business that places travel nurses? Are ICU travel nurses in high demand?

ICU travel nurse Deji Falani, RN I was satisfied being an ICU nurse, but I was not content with the knowledge I had acquired. I wanted to impact the world beyond my residential city. I love meeting people. Therefore, I pushed myself to follow up on a referral made by another experienced travel nurse I had spoken with. The recruiter asked questions about my interests, specialty, etc. While awaiting offers, I called and spoke with other travel agencies to compare my preferred assignment, convenience, and of course salary rates.

Yes! Travel nurses are in high demand. An ICU travel nurse with experience in complex critical interventions such as continuous renal replacement therapy (CRRT), hypothermia protocol (Arctic Sun), and certifications such as critical care registered nurse (CCRN), etc., are in high demand.

What do you like most about working as a travel nurse?

Every facility has its own unique way of carrying out nursing processes. I love learning new ways of doing the same thing. These new experiences add to my wealth of knowledge.

What are the biggest challenges you face in travel nursing?

Finding a suitable accommodation. A comfortable and affordable place to live while on a travel assignment is vital to my overall well-being. I love to find a place that is close to a gym, a grocery store, and at closest proximity to the hospital.

What are your greatest rewards as one?

New friendships and networking.

Is there anything else that is important for our readers to know?

The key here is to add value to their team and strive to make an impact such that you become an asset and not a liability. I always ask the nurse manager or leaders what ways I could be more useful to their team. Have a positive attitude, rid yourself of trivial complaints. Be a part of the solution you are there to be and have fun while doing it. Blend in quickly and be an important team player. Do this, and you’ll be surprised at how fast the facility will ask you to stay longer with them.

Nurse of the Week: Delta Variant Persuaded ED Nurse Grace Zieba to Get Her Jab and Speak Out

Nurse of the Week: Delta Variant Persuaded ED Nurse Grace Zieba to Get Her Jab and Speak Out

Our Nurse of the Week believes what she sees and tends to trust precedents. “I’m not a big anti-vaxxer, I am vaccinated in every other area. But this [the mRNA Covid vaccine] was something that I just wasn’t really comfortable with,” says Oklahoma ED nurse Grace Zieba.

From her first-hand experience at INTEGRIS Grove Hospital during the 2020 outbreak, Zieba saw that patients succumbing to the virus tended to suffer comorbidities, or were very old, so she did not consider it a mortal threat to herself or the general population. “There were always other factors that had affected their overall health and I just kept thinking to myself, I’m young, and I’m healthy. And that was kind of my stance as far as even if I got COVID, I felt like it wasn’t gonna affect me as much as it had affected some of the patients that I had been caring for.”

Zieba’s view held firm through all of 2020, and when the mRNA vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna were rolled out, she still did not feel the sense of urgency conveyed by most of the news media. Also, the vaccines only had emergency authorization, and she had grave reservations about jabbing millions of shoulders with vaccines that were developed at a speed that was every bit as unprecedented as the pandemic itself. For Zieba, the turning point came as she started her 10th year at INTEGRIS Grove and witnessed the spread of the Delta variant.

“Some patients coming in were just as healthy as I am (sometimes even healthier)… And there are some that we have lost, and some that Covid has literally made them fight for their lives.”

Lately, Zieba has seen the hospital fill up with Covid patients who are not elderly or even middle-aged. Some have been in their 40s and even 30s, and are ending up just as dead as the 80-year-old patients who fell to Covid last year—and that has been a chilling wake-up call. “Some patients coming in were just as healthy as I am (sometimes even healthier)… and there are some that we have lost, and some that Covid has literally made them fight for their lives.”

With Delta in the ascendant, Zieba’s vaccine hesitance and uncertainty about the scope and targets of SARS-CoV-2 has evaporated. The new convert has been urging family, friends, and patients to get their jabs ASAP. “I’ve made the decision that it’s time. It’s time to be vaccinated! I’m not immune to COVID as a 40-year-old woman with no comorbidities and I’m not ready for it to give me the fight of my life.”

For more details on Grace Zieba’s experience, see Oklahoma News 4.

Oklahoma Hospitals Face Crisis as Covid Cases Surge

Oklahoma Hospitals Face Crisis as Covid Cases Surge

Like other largely rural states bearing the brunt of the brutal SARS-CoV-2 holiday spike, Oklahoma hospitals are scrambling to care for patients amid overcrowding, understaffing, and bed shortages. The state estimates that at present there are at least 1,000 Covid-19 in Oklahoma hospitals, and the health care system is at risk of splitting along its seams.

“And that’s the way it is in Oklahoma…”

According to Tulsa World , “Some hospitals are putting patients in hallways, renovating conference rooms into ERs, converting entire wings into COVID units, limiting nonemergency procedures and surgeries, and admitting only the “sickest of the sick” COVID patients.” The new year is having a harsh beginning. Last Wednesday, at a weekly Project ECHO meeting at Oklahoma State University, Dr. Jennifer Clark, who leads COVID-19 data sessions, said, “January is already stacking up to be a pretty significant month. My guess is we’ll probably see doubling of most of our numbers” She noted, “It’s no big secret that our nursing shortage existing prior to the pandemic is now kind of crippling us to some extent. We don’t have the staff to take care of between 1,000 and 2,000 extra hospitalizations.”

On average, 26 Oklahomans are dying of Covid-related complications each day, making it the third leading cause of death in the state, after heart disease and cancer. Clark remarked, “So you can see that our hospitals are not only full based on regular hospital folks who get sick in the wintertime, but now we have COVID on top of it. It’s almost overtaking our ability to take care of folks.” Clinicians in a range of specialties are being called upon to pitch in. Pediatricians, for example, are helping in adult hospitals, outpatient primary care providers are working shifts at their area hospitals, and doctors at rural health facilities are cramming to learn unfamiliar treatment techniques so they can treat incoming Covid patients.

“Our Covid patients are some of the sickest I’ve seen”

At a virtual news conference, ICU nurse Amy Petitt (who works at SSM Health St. Anthony Hospital in Oklahoma City) said that exhausted nurses are working 50-60 hour weeks. She said of current conditions: “We’re seeing more patients — more critically sick patients. Our COVID patients are some of the sickest we’ve seen. When they come to us in the ICU, a lot of them require intubation, lines, they have to be turned on their bellies, they require being paralyzed pharmacologically, sedation, blood pressure medication, dialysis…” Petitt added, “Everybody has stepped up, taking higher acuity patients and higher patient loads. [But] it’s not sustainable in the long run, and we need the community’s help.”

During the Covid surge, Oklahoma health officials are urging people with other serious illnesses to stay in touch with their HCPs via telemedicine visits and to contact community services for home health care or palliative care services.

For more on Oklahoma’s battle with Covid, see the coverage in Tulsa World.