Traveling Nurse Michelle Lawrence - ER Nurse - Atlas Life #66

Ronnie: I am Ronnie Robinette and I'm a recruiter and an nurse.

Ronnie: Michelle was actually ... I inherited her from another recruiter who changed positions and it ended up, we were from the same town. I met her in person before she even started on her first travel assignment. I saw that she was from Roanoke, Virginia, which is my home base. And I was just like, "Hey, I'm going to be home next week, we need to get together." And she was like, "absolutely." So that was kind of the only phone conversation that we had. And then when we met, pretty much we hit it off. We know a lot of the same people and stuff like that. So it was really fun.

Michelle: My name's Michelle, I'm a first time traveler. I'm an ER nurse. I've been an ER nurse for approximately 14 years. My first travel assignment, I'm currently at Kaiser West LA.

Michelle: Well, actually, I work with a girl named Kristen back home and she started traveling and so I just messaged her. I was like, "hey, what experience have you had?" When she switched over to radiology, she sent me to Ronnie.

Michelle: I love adventure. I'm a junkie, obviously working in ER and I've always wanted to travel, but I've been a single mom for a long time. My daughter went to college, so I decided when she took off to college, I was going to travel. So, here I am.

Michelle: The most amazing part has been getting to see part of the world. Since I've been in California, I've been able to see 10 or more beaches. I actually took off to Hawaii for a few days. Just getting to see different scenery here that I haven't seen back East. Here in LA there's tons of beaches. Hiked the Gordon Canyons, the Hollywood sign. It's a seven mile trip straight up the mountain, so that was challenging. But seeing the scenery of the city. And then a Hawaii, Hawaii is amazing.

Michelle: I'm really close out here. So it's easy to travel to other areas while on the West coast. I got to surf in Hawaii. I'm trying to become a surfer girl in California. So, that's pretty much the most exciting thing.

Michelle: I've met some amazing friends that I'll probably have life long, out here. I've actually extended. So I guess that's kind of helped build some relationships longterm. At work, I'm all work so I don't really carry stuff to work or to home from work. But I think just trying to find my own normal routine within constant change around me. That really has been a challenge for me. I just got back in the routine of kind of housework and gym and the normal errands that you run, and then make time for vacation days on my days off. I'm trying to just plan that out a little bit better.

Michelle: I think just getting used to each facility's policies or the way they do things. I've actually worked pretty much at one hospital for 13 years, so I've kind of been in the normal routine in one facility. Just learning to be flexible and open to feedback and how they do things and be open to doing it a little bit differently than you normally doing it.

Michelle: I love LA, but I feel like this is my first assignment, so I really need to see something else. I'm thinking either Northern California, Nevada, Arizona, somewhere like that. Parts of the winter. I don't really like cold, cold weather, so I'm trying to manage around the seasons.