The Paperwork.

Every now and then I receive an email from Christa, a service tech that works at my agency's office. I dread seeing her emails. The reason isn't that I don't like her, she is very sweet on the phone, but its her message. I open the latests; "A new requirement is soon to expire...", it says; just like all of them. This time I need to take a drug screen test, soon my yearly physical will be required as well.

In an attempt to stay JACOH compliant there is a litany of paper work and testing required above and beyond what is also required by the hospital that a traveler is assigned to. For those who choose to work with more than one agency at a time, something quite advisable at times, the same requirements will have to be done for each. I must admit there have been times I stayed with the same agency just to avoid filling out all the paperwork. A move that might have cost me more money in the long run, but that just gives you an idea how much I dislike it.

If you are thinking of working with more than one agency in the near future, it might be wise to start in plenty of advance time before your next move in order to break up the amount of cram time necessary to choosing your next assignment, for surely the facility will require more papers and orientation work as well, and its easy to get burned out with the lot. The week of and following your move can be exhausting, so preparation time in advance will be well spent.

I met a fellow traveler who had most all of his paper work, put in pdf formated files, that way he could easily send them to any interesting agency. If I was that tech savvy I would do the same, but since not, I have all my documents scanned and in a Word file for easy emailing. Going through the process once is difficult enough, making it easier the next time is a mind saver.

I would assume that most travelers keep their documentation in some kind of folder or case, and be sure to keep that in the car trunk the first week of orientation. I remember a woman being told not to return to orientation until she brought her ACLS card with her, which unfortunately was left in another state.

A recent assignment required on line orientation, which I was unable to begin until arriving at the local hotel that same week of orientation, the hotel had advertised wi-fi so I thought everything would go well. Instead I learned that wi-fi and hi-speed internet meant two completely different things, as the carrier was crawled through the video programs at a snails pace and what should have taken six hours turned into a disaster of an all-nighter.

The lesson from this post would be that the transition from one assignment to another has plenty of hidden perils, therefore take care of the easy things well in advance as much as possible in order to deal with what ever may happen.

Hope your travels all go well!