In this episode, I'm joined by Amanda Readinger, a nurse who details her journey from bedside nurse to travel nurse. Beginning with a career in psych mental health, choosing to leave the bedside to find ways of paying off student debt, Amanda then decided to make travel nursing a full time job. We discuss all of the in's and out's of travel nursing including financing, health insurance, job security, and training. Amanda then left to go and travel to California to take a job working the COVID ICU's. The differences between report styles of COVID ICU patients and non-COVID ICU patients; the donning and doffing process; the teamwork of a COVID ICU unit; the mental exhaustion, stresses and challenges of working in two California major cities-Amanda details this journey of the red zone in Los Angeles. What a crisis team is and why not everyone would receive care if the pandemic grows out of proportion. Amanda graciously describes her feelings of what her experience was like and what burnout meant to her. Finally, Amanda discusses her next journey which is to be a Psychiatric Nurse Practitioner!

Amanda graduated from Wilkes University in 2013 with a bachelors in psychology. After working a couple years as a mental health technician, she realized she had an interest in nursing. She attended DeSales University’s accelerated BSN program and graduated in 2017. She went directly into ICU nursing and worked as a staff nurse for two years before going into travel nursing. She currently has been in PA, CA and CT while attending Walden University for her Masters to be a psychiatric nurse practitioner. When she isn’t proning patients and there isn’t a pandemic surrounding us, she enjoys Broadway shows, concerts, playing with her puppy and putting together LEGO sets with her fiancé, Stewart.