TRS Healthcare travel nurse Lesly Chittavong, RN, has been working as a nurse for nearly five years and has already made a significant impact on the hospitals and patients she’s helped.
As an advocate for both physical and mental health, Lesly has won multiple DAISY awards for her excellence as a nurse.
Lesly’s career began shortly after she graduated nursing school in May 2020. From there, she went on to work in the intensive care unit (ICU), where she rapidly gained experience with emergency situations. She worked with burn patients, ICU patients, pediatric patients, Level I trauma patients, and other high-acuity patients all within months of becoming a nurse.
“My patients looked very different than other patients you’d typically see during orientation. I learned quickly how to think on my feet,” says Lesly.
Then, once she had a little over a year of experience, Lesly began applying to travel nursing jobs—something she had always wanted to do.
“A lot of the recruiters at other companies were robotic,” Lesly explained. “It wasn’t until I found Blaze, my recruiter [at TRS Healthcare], that I had a genuine conversation. I’ve been with Blaze since 2022 and haven’t looked back ever since.”
During her days off during her travel nursing assignments, Lesly loves finding dog-friendly places to explore with her dachshunds, Sophia and Rocky, who she says make her feel as though she’s bringing her home with her whenever she travels.
In addition to travel nursing, Lesly promotes wellness through her small business: a mental health advocacy brand called Love Your Mental.
She started this business in 2021 after designing and selling an enamel pin, with half of proceeds going to the Illinois chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), as a way of combining her love of art and passion for mental health. Within her first two months, Lesly sold out her stock of 100 pins and raised over $1,000 for NAMI Illinois.
Since then, she has hosted a farmers market-style event each year in Rockford, Illinois, where she’s from and raised more than $8,000 since 2021 for mental health nonprofit organizations.
“I never got a business degree, so it was challenging, but I’m also grateful that a lot of people support my vision, which is breaking down the stigma against mental health,” explains Lesly.
Now, Lesly is combining her love for her travel nursing career with her passion for mental health and is going back to school for her Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) degree to become a psychiatric nurse practitioner—a role she hopes will help allow her to better educate her patients.
“Travel nursing has given me the opportunity to learn from new peers, professionals, and doctors,” says Lesly. “Now, I want to use Love Your Mental and my degree for advocacy and education.”
Wherever her career takes her, Lesly is sure to promote meaningful change. “You’ve got to look at every day like it’s a brand-new day. You have to be positive, and you have to be hopeful,” she adds.
You can follow Love Your Mental on Facebook or @love.your.mental on Instagram.
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