The Atlas Life

Traveling Nurse James Jourdan | ER Travel Nurse - The Atlas Life 85

Ever wonder what it's like to be a #TravelNurse? Learn how being an ER Travel Nurse has opened up new opportunities and big adventure for Atlas's James Jourdan. Think Paul sounds like your type of #recruiter?

Get to know Paul: https://atlasmedstaff.com/atlas-team/paul-baxter/

What will your adventure be?

Paul Baxter: I'm Paul Baxter. I am a remote recruiter for Atlas Medstaff here in Palm Harbor, Florida and I can help you too. So James is actually ... he was brought to me through a transition we had here at Atlas. A recruiter that he was working with made a choice to go elsewhere, and we always like to take care of our nurses when that happens that are on assignment and we look for people that are good fits with one another. And when James and I first talked, we just really hit it off. We found some common ground with college football, we're both college football fans and we happen to be rivals, but we're college football fans and we were able to find some common ground and really just hit it off from the beginning. James is open-minded, he's interested in the travel nursing aspect. He loves being in new locations and meeting new people, that's the drive for him. So location and things like that are not a concern.

Paul Baxter: So my job really was to find facilities that had a need for what he does, but also are willing to look at somebody with a little bit less time clinically or bedside time. The place where he did his first assignment was begging for him to extend, so I know he does a great job, and I'm super excited for this next assignment because it's a larger facility, he's going to get a little bit more of that larger facility experience, but the position he's at, he'll also get an opportunity to work with several hospitals within that system during that assignment.

James Jourdan: So my name is James Jourdan. I'm an ER nurse and right now, I'm in Shelby, North Carolina at Atrium Health Hospital. Paul is what I like to say, the goat. He's definitely made things happen for me that I didn't think could happen, but he has. He's been helping me through it all. So it's been pretty cool, he's been pretty cool.

James Jourdan: I've always loved traveling as a kid. My mom's from the Philippines and she traveled over there a lot, and I used to like the whole travel thing. I was like, "Well, I want to do this one day and I want to help people out." So, now I became a nurse and now I've figured out about travel nurse, and I was like, "Oh okay, cool. Well, I can just accomplish both of those at the same time."

James Jourdan: I was more prepared than I thought I was going to be at the hospital I was at. I really loved it and I miss the people. I'm still friends with them, I talk to them every now and then. So, it's overall been a great experience so far. The best part of travel nursing is getting the opportunity to ... I know this is a cliche' answer, but seeing new people. I'm from Mississippi where they're cool and all over, but then you meet people from other areas, you kind of realize, well honestly, people really aren't that different from wherever you go. So, I think that's a pretty cool part I learned about it.

James Jourdan: As far as the worst part, honestly, is leaving. Whenever .... Like the last place, I hated to leave, but I knew I had to because money calls. Really, the hardest thing to learn is your first few days there of being at the hospital, learning where everything's at. You can be the best nurse ever, but when you're in that new environment, you don't know where everything is at, it kind of slows you down a little bit. I think that's one of the challenges that everybody faces as a travel nurse, but we get over it, it's all right.

James Jourdan: The ER is definitely what I always want to do because I always like the trauma side of it, but once I started getting into it, it's kind of more interesting dealing with ... Some people don't like mental health patients. I actually like mental health patients because I've learned of how to talk a person, not the textbook way but the James Jourdan way through ER, and it works perfect. And then you also got the drunk people when you're working nights, and that's always interesting because they come in, they're cussing you out and what not, swinging at you and ... yeah. But you realize after they sober up and whatnot, afterwards, you're like, "Okay, he's actually a pretty cool person." So, you get to see a lot of that and it's pretty interesting, the ER.

James Jourdan: Facebook brought me to Atlas, but what really kept me there is the recruiters. I really appreciate my two recruiters that I've had, they've been awesome, I've been blessed with that. So yeah, that's what brought me there, and that's what kept me there.

James Jourdan: You know, somewhere overseas will be really cool if they paying me right. I guess I've always said somewhere like Guam or Hawaii or just somewhere overseas, that's my goal. That's one of my goals to at least do it at least once or twice, and I'm sure I'll get there.

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