The Atlas Life

The Atlas Life #51 - Morgan McDonald, Travel Pediatric RN

Meet Morgan McDoland, who is on her first travel assignment ever in Omaha, Nebraska! Learn more about her and her friendship with her recruiter, Allison Mergens.

Allison: Morgan said that she looked up, does Omaha have Target? We have six Targets, so and a lot of Super Targets, which I think is hilarious. But yeah, we have Targets. I think maybe that was the main selling point.

Morgan: Probably.

Morgan: My name is Morgan McDonald. I'm a pediatric nurse and I've been a nurse for two and a half years.

Allison: We started talking several months ago. It was in the fall of 2018. I don't even remember how we got connected.

Morgan: I just called the Atlas line of some sort and she answered.

Allison: I must have been the first person to pick up the phone. I'm always trying to be quick on picking up the phone.

Morgan: I just have always kind of have like a Traveler's heart and I knew that the time was now, young and single and that's why I made the move at 25 years old. She was sending me so many options and I don't know it just seemed like something wasn't clicking on...

Allison: All the other ones, yeah it just didn't seem like it was meant to be, or it was right. It didn't feel like the perfect fit and Morgan's from Georgia, from Atlanta, and to come all the way to Omaha for her first assignment as a younger person who had never been here before. First assignment, it was kind of a gamble, this is not something that you really hear most people on their first assignment, especially when they're younger. So for her to come here, was kind of crazy, but I think I'm sure I was probably like, "Well I'm here, so you should come here and like we can hang out." So.

Morgan: Yeah, everything just went very smoothly with the transition here. It was like, Hey, these people want you or want to interview you. And then they interviewed me and the next day they're like, "Okay, we want you." And everything was so smooth with this. I was like, "This must be where I need to go because everything works." Everyone's been so nice to me, which I was a little bit wary of coming in. There's a traveler coming in, I don't know if they're going to be super kind or kind of standoffish, but everybody has treated me like I've worked here for years. So it's been really nice. The weather here, OMG, the neg. I had never experienced negative degrees in my entire life and I thought I was going to turn into an ice cube.

Allison: Morgan told me before this that she tried to build a snowman yesterday because she's never built a snowman before and it didn't work out.

Morgan: It didn't, I was so upset.

Allison: The snow wasn't sticking together so she couldn't make a snowman. So that's something we have to do before she leaves.

Morgan: Right.

Allison: Your dog loves it.

Morgan: Oh my gosh, my dog loves it. I can barely get her out of it. My next assignment will be in the summer. So I think it would really be fun to be close to a beach if that's possible, but...

Allison: We'll see what we can work out. I think the best part about working with Morgan is that she is just so real and honest. She's my friend. Not only is she here in town, but we live three blocks away from each other. Where she's staying is literally down the street. She's an incredible nurse too. Just hearing the stories about what she's doing at work. She had a patient that she sat with because it was a seven or eight year old that just got diagnosed with cancer and she sat with her and she let the girl paint her nails and I just think she's an awesome person, a great friend and an incredible nurse. Makes my job really easy.

Morgan: Wow. So kind. Working with Alison has just been easy. Even when I was in Georgia, I was like "Hi there, she's my friend." Because we talked like she said, just very normal and real and I told her, I would tell her things like, "Scared" or like, "I think I'm going to fail this test." She's like, "You've got it." She took me and my dad out to dinner. That's just something that I wouldn't have expected from her. That's just something, she went the extra mile to meet my dad who's in town for a couple of days. At the end of the day, it's good knowing that I have a friend that's a couple blocks away. If I have any Omaha questions or something about the weather, I'm able just to call her and we figure it out. Well, she figures it out and tells me. So it's been fun. It's just I got a friend out of the deal.

X