How to be a Traveling Nurse

Oct 20

How to be a traveling nurse

First, I want you to know how excited I am to be writing this blog! When I graduated nursing school and I realized I could get paid to travel, it became my soul’s purpose. I traveled for a total of 3 years and am excited how many nurses are interested and actively doing the same.

So for all of you travelers, soon-to-be travelers, and those dreaming of traveling….this one’s for you!

The first things people usually think about are the glamourous points of travel nurse life. The most obvious being the traveling, then traveling nurses housing, or the highest paying travel nursing jobs. You may be curious to find out what the hot travel nursing jobs are or even about international travel nursing jobs.

Regardless of where you’re at, the first thing to talk about is how to prepare to be a travel nurse and are there educational requirements?

Travel Nurse Education Requirements

Are there educational requirement to do travel nursing? The basic answer is no. I know LPN’s, surgical techs, nursing assistants, and I traveled with an associate’s degree at the time. However, if you’re one of those looking for international travel nursing jobs you’ll most likely be required to have a bachelor’s degree at minimum. For international travel, you’ll also probably have to have more testing than you would traveling nationally.

Should new grads be travelers?

All that being said, what about new grads? Should new grads be travel nurses? My opinion is absolutely not. Could they do it? Sure, anyone could do anything when they have to. However Is it a prudent idea to travel too early? No.

To travel you have to be working at least 3 months consistently in a specific setting to be able to travel in that same area. I traveled working acute rehab. and then telemetry step-down and had AT LEAST a couple years working both prior to traveling. I was a nurse about 5 years before taking my first assignment.

When you travel, your orientation is usually just a couple days. A hospital or agency isn’t going to give you the same orientation and grace as they would a full-time staff member because they expect you already know what you’re doing. My longest orientation period as a traveler was 3 days.

Also, being a traveler requires you to be confident in your decisions. You need a solid foundation to have this or you could make detrimental mistakes or pick up bad habits.

Examples

1: My first travel assignment the director of nursing and 2 other nurses asked me to change my charting because a patient developed a bed sore. They wanted me to put the sore was there on admission when it wasn’t. I was asked to do this a week after my assessment. I didn’t change anything and told them there was no sore when I did the admission.
2: I landed at a hospital where all of the nurses were giving PO and IV pain medicine at the same time. They had a rationale for it but it didn’t make sense and I’d never heard of that. I called the pharmacy to see if that was accurate and was told “absolutely not, it’s called a nurse’s dose and we don’t do that.” Little did he know, every…..single……nurse was doing it. I refused to do it and spaced it out every 2 hours. I was cussed out by patients and judged by other nurses.
3: I was asked to give IV Ativan every hour until a patient was sedated…..on a step-down tele floor…..on night shift.....with an 8 patient assignment. The charge nurse said to me “I want to give you a challenge…”, the charge nurse didn’t realize it was an inappropriate order. I said no, that’s not okay to do outside of an ICU with my patient assignment. It wasn’t safe at all.

Had I would’ve been a newer nurse without a solid foundation, any one of these scenarios could’ve put me, my license, and my patients at risk.

As a traveler, I was oriented by nurses who were newer and doing things the wrong way, but as a new nurse you may not catch it . You could easily pick up very bad habits. I could go on….

These all sound like simple situations reading them on a blog but in the moment it’s a very different story. I feel the most dangerous people in healthcare are the ones that think they know it all because they don’t ask and make mistakes. You don’t know what you don’t know and some of that learning just takes time.

In my opinion, you worked hard for your nursing license. You got into nursing because you probably have a very loving, caring heart and you like helping people. It would serve your career and your patients to make sure you have a solid foundation and feel confident as a nurse before you start traveling.

The money and glamour is mesmerizing but travel nursing isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

If you choose to travel as a new grad, I can’t stress enough how important it is to have a mentor you can call with questions. I would suggest having two:

a nurse you’d trust to take care of the person you love the most and
a traveling nurse mentor who is an experienced nurse and traveler as well.

Hi I’m Christen!

I was just a tired, exhausted, burned out nurse dreading work and imaging what I could do instead of nursing.

It affected me professionally AND personally!

Now I help nurses struggling or wanting to prevent the struggle using the same strategies and tools I used to create a happier, healthier life.

Traveling can help with burnout when you’re taking care of yourself.

Check out my top 10 Tips for Travel Nurses below!

Get my top tips!

What is the salary of a travel nurse

This is always the first question that comes to mind with traveling: “How much do travel nurses make?” or “What is a traveling nurse salary?” These are great and fair questions, however I think the more important point is how to maximize your income while traveling. **Maximizing what you could do as a traveler may be more beneficial for your purse and your personal health than just going after the highest dollar amount.**

Travel nurse salaries have changed so much over the years. Before 2008, travel bonuses were the big thing. A start bonus, completion bonus, plus high pay. When I say bonus, I’m not talking about poor nurse’s week bonuses hospitals try to give out with their logos and other bullshit on it that has nothing to do with nursing. I’m talking bonuses of $500-$1000 a pop.

After 2008 the bonuses slowly drifted away, the hourly decreased, and the advertising became more about how much you’d make in a week. There were more weekend travel nursing jobs and short travel nursing assignments however with COVID hospitals are looking to pay more with the expectation of getting more for their money. I still see the weekly amounts advertised however since COVID nurses are asked to give more for it.

It used to be the standard three 12’s/week or old school 8 hour shifts 5 days/week. However since COVID and the large pay increases being given to travelers, nurses are being asked to work four 12 hour shifts per week. COVID patients require a lot of care and pre-COVID burnout rates were astronomical, now asking nurses to do an extra shift is a big ask.

Is the money there for it? You bet! In fact, I just saw a hospital in Michigan advertising a year-long contract paying a little over $310,000/year. But, how much of yourself are you willing to give to work four 12s? Traveling is just as much about the experience of doing it, not just the pay.

Going after the highest dollar amount isn’t always the wisest decision. Sure it looks great, but so did the Tiger King series. Once you watched it and realized what it actually was, you saw how fucked up shit was. Traveling to some hospitals isn’t much different.

A lot of hospitals need travelers for a reason. Right now so much can be blamed on COVID but pre-COVID there were plenty of issues with places of employment. To be fair, there are perfectly good and well run hospitals that use travelers

Warning Signs

A couple warning signs I for going to hospitals. These are things I consider when possibly renewing my contract or signing on permanently.

Are there more travelers than full-time staff? I remember one hospital I worked at, no one really talked to each other and I thought maybe the culture was just a cold one. However, all of us started talking one day and we realized about 95% of the staff were travelers! It was so bad that the travelers complained and one travel company almost pulled their contract.
Another sign are large sign-on bonuses for full-time staff. That’s always a red flag for me. Could it turn out to be a good experience? Absolutely, but it’s just one of those things that I approach with cautious optimism. Places of employment wouldn’t be paying thousands of dollars if people were competing to get in the door.
The third tip is if all the full-time staff are new grads. If there aren’t experienced nurses it tells me one of 2 things:
Something’s going on, experienced nurses know better and stay away
Age-ism. It does exist and I’ve seen hospitals willing to fire knowledgeable staff to pay less and pay out families to avoid lawsuits rather than doing right by their employee and the public

I know one traveler whose story goes into more detail below, but the summarized version is her recruiter kept offering more and more housing money (not hourly money) for her to go to a certain hospital. We found out talking to a more experienced traveler the amount of housing stipend being offered was worth seriously considering the assignment.

What does the housing stipend have to do with anything? I talk about it more in the section below: “How to maximize your travel nurse income.”

Loving the tips so far?

Get my Top 10 Tips for Travel Nurses >>

How to maximize your travel nurse income

Have a Travel buddy

One of the best ways to maximize your income while protecting your safety is to travel with a friend. I looked for someone to travel with, believe me, and everyone was back in school to be an NP. However, nowadays with the pandemic it seems travel nursing is all the rage!

If you travel with a friend you always know someone where you work and can call if an emergency happens while you’re on assignment.

My very first assignment I drove all the way from TN to CA. The day before my assignment started my car was broken into. Just about everything was stolen. Thankfully I had my GPS with me so I found where I was going but the closest person I knew in CA was 8 hours away. I felt so alone and scared. Having a travel buddy in that moment would’ve made a big difference.

For those of you who don’t know, when you travel your company will find you furnished housing to live in. However, if you’re paying out of pocket for your own housing you’ll get a tax free housing stipend. It was more lucrative for me to stay at an extended stay hotel or find my own housing and take the stipend, depending on where I was at the time. In CA I took the housing, but in AZ I found my own.

If you travel with a friend, one of you can take the housing and the other person can take the stipend. The person who took the stipend can pay rent to the person taking the housing….you’d both benefit.

Have a permanent residence

Speaking of taxes, another thing to do is to make sure you have a permanent residence in your home state. I didn’t own a home so I stayed with my sister for a few months before my first assignment. Her house was also the place I stayed when I took time off between assignments, and where I lived when I was done traveling. I paid her a low monthly rent for letting me do this and it was still cheaper than having a mortgage or apartment.

(Full disclosure, if I understood how real estate worked at the time, I probably would’ve bought a house but I digress).

Anyway, this is important to have if you want to pay your home state’s tax rate. There’s a 3 Factor Test the IRS uses to determine your tax home. I’m not an expert in this by any means and I suggest you discuss this with your accountant.

My last travel assignment was in 2012 and at that time I fulfulled the requirements.

I worked with my recruiter and my accountant to make sure I qualified.

Talk with other travelers

I suggest talking to travelers, joining travel nurse groups, and asking your questions before making calls to companies. As with everything, take what you read online with a grain of salt.

After my first couple assignments, I learned I worked for a company with a reputation for paying nurses the least amount of money. Had I would’ve talked to others and did more research then I may have made a different decision about the company. I would’ve been able to figure out top travel nursing agencies and best paying travel nurse companies from people that knew firsthand.

When you call a travel company and say you’re interested in being a travel nurse, they’ll connect you with a random recruiter. That’ll be your assigned recruiter. So later if your friend tells you about a different recruiter they love at the same company and you try to call and talk to that recruiter, it’ll be nearly impossible. iInstead you’ll get the 3rd degree from the company about why you want to swap. Recruiters are in sales, they don’t like losing business.

Do a little digging before calling companies directly. Some nurses made their career out of traveling and can let you know which companies pay the least, which recruiters are their favorite, and onboarding experiences at different hospitals.

Travel Nurse Tips

You learn so many tips and tricks by talking with experienced travelers. For example, I learned while on assignment that if I went to Florida I would have to pass a separate math test to get a nursing license there.

If I went to a certain hospital system in TX I would have to pass a whole separate test to be able to work there. These aren’t big deals but if you’re a competent nurse looking for minimal hassles then it’s helpful info to know.

I knew one nurse that was a pro, she had 3 houses and 2 cars. Her secret was going to CA as a traveler, taking the housing provided (normally, you wouldn’t make CA $$ on a travel contract btw-however COVID times may be different), then she would get a prn or second full-time job because the starting hourly wage in CA is very high due to the cost of living. She would live in her travel assigned housing, pay her home state taxes, and bank the rest of the money. It could be very lucrative.

Avoid Burnout by staying balanced

HOWEVER…..Is it better to make a lot of money quickly then hate your life, your job, and burnout quickly as well? You’ll make more money in the long run with a more balanced approach instead of working yourself to burnout simply because you’ll be able to last longer in the profession. If you’re making a lot of money as a traveler, why not take classes on financial planning or hire someone you trust to help you make the most out of your income? Give back to yourself to protect your resilience with a:

monthly massage,
fun vacation
relaxing breathing session with me

I knew one traveler that made a small group of travel friends and they would all save up extra money and take off work October, November, and December every year.

Travel Nurse Housing

Another thing to consider in addition to your weekly pay is the housing stipend that’s offered to you. Average housing stipend for travel nurses depend on where you’re looking to travel. With the availability of several temporary living options, being able to find traveling healthcare rentals is easier now than it was before.

Options are:

Bed and Breakfasts,

Extended stay hotels (I’ve had the best luck calling the 1-800 number for extended stays and letting them know which location you want to stay. You can usually negotiate a better rate),

VRBO,

Gypsy Soul Travel Nurse Housing Facebook group,

Furnished Finder,

buying your own RV,

and

Airbnb

travel nurses have a lot more options for alternative housing.

How can housing stipends benefit you?

So let’s look at how a stipend would benefit you. It’s not just about an hourly/weekly pay rate. Your stipend can make a big difference.

Pretend Example:

If you’re making $30/hour but your housing stipend is $2500/week then it would be worth looking into because you’d be paying taxes on the $30/hour but your weekly $2500 in housing is tax free. That would be about $10,000/month you’d make without having to pay taxes on it. If you find a rental for $800-$1000/month, you’d pocket the rest of the stipend.

Remember that nurse I was talking about earlier where her recruiter kept offering her more and more housing stipend money to go to a specific hospital? Her deal was similar to this. Today with inflation and COVID it doesn’t sound like that much money, but back in 2010 it was. It was definitely worth considering.

You can always take agency housing however the weekly/hourly pay becomes more significant to pay attention to since you won’t be getting a housing stipend. Agencies can accommodate pets but sometimes they’ll upcharge.

Things are negotiable in travel nursing. You can ask about condering distance to/from hospital, car rental depending on where you go, or even including cable or washer/dryer.

Benefits of Travel Nursing

Pros

Travel is probably the biggest pro. You’re getting to travel the country or sometimes the world AND get paid to do it! Most nurses love to travel, and I’m one of them. This was probably my biggest benefit

Networking. You get to meet so many different people and as big as healthcare is, sometimes it can be a small world too. Not only do you meet fun and interesting people but you get a chance to build your reputation wherever you go. People will remember how it was working with you and if they’d want you back or not. The highest compliment is when the staff asks you to stay on permanently.

Being able to avoid inclement weather. I’m originally from Ohio so I’m very familiar with snow, winter, and level 3 weather advisories. I don’t want to travel to Ohio in the dead of winter, but I may want to travel to Texas or New Mexico. However when it gets unbearably hot I may want to head back up north to the cooler weather for the summer. You have this luxury as a traveler.

Avoiding work politics. I’m at an assignment for 12 weeks or temporarily should the contract be longer. I don’t need to go to your work meetings or deal with the bullshit that comes with working somewhere full-time. As a traveler, I just go in….do my job….do my job well….leave….repeat.

Making new friends. I’ve known travelers that start out solo but end up meeting other travelers along the way and they found their travel buddy. You’re meeting people who love to travel AND have the ability to actually do so-you found your commonality!

You learn very quickly if you’d ever work for a certain hospital or agency without ever hiring in full-time. There are 2 hospitals coming to mind that I would never work at full-time. They were awful and their doctors seemed to have a more elitist, egotistical attitude than what I felt was normal at the time.

Cons

If you travel alone, you’ll meet people but a lot of your relationships are usually temporary. Some people keep in touch for sure, but the old saying “out of sight, out of mind” applies. If you’re traveling somewhere that doesn’t have a lot of travelers, maintaining relationships after your gone can become more of a challenge.

You have the feeling of being unsettled. At least I did because you have a permanent place and you move frequently. I would say that I’ll get things or I’ll do things once I stop traveling. At some point I had to stop to achieve some of my goals (this could’ve just been me personally, like I said some nurses make their career from travel).

Speaking of moving, you get tired of doing the moving work. I was at a hospital in TX and I didn’t feel it was the best environment but it was an 8 week contract. I needed more time before I moved again. My last travel assignment was in AZ. I went to go pack up my things and I got sick to my stomach. I couldn’t move again. Packing and unpacking does get old.

If you don’t work, you don’t get paid. If an emergency happens and you need to take time off between assignments, you don’t get paid. Saving for a rainy day is important when traveling.

Work politics in a strange environment. I went to this hospital and was doing a pretest to work there. During the pretest, someone from the hospital came in and it just seemed they were wanting to show who was in charge or having a bad day or something. For some reason, I was the target.

I had my cell phone out (it was on silent) and that was all it took. For the next 2-3 minutes she was asking me if I had a problem or what my problem was, etc. I can’t even remember the full details now but it was weird because it came out of nowhere. She was looking to engage with someone. Anyway my response was simple, calm “no I don’t have any problem”… “no, everything is fine”…etc etc.

After, one of the experienced travelers in the room told me it was good to just keep saying no and keep staying calm because she’s known travelers that get fired for saying the wrong thing or engaging with a full-time staff member on a warpath.

During orientation at another hospital, the bulk of orientation was some lady giving all the reasons they’ve fired travel nurses in the past, it was weird. Most places are happy to have the help, but sometimes you run into odd birds. Don’t let it get to you, you aren’t stuck there.

Just remember, your time there is temporary and you’re probably never going to see most of the people again anyway. Don’t let someone having a bad day, looking for an argument, or trying to boost their ego ruin your assignment.

Conclusion

At the end of the day, I feel a balanced approach and maximizing your income is best. Having boundaries and protecting your resilience doesn’t need to be sacrificed to get the highest paying travel assignment out there. Instead of just running yourself to burnout and chasing after the highest dollar amount, travel smarter not harder. Travel with a buddy, network, find someone you trust to help you manage all of your income in the best way for you, take care of yourself, and have fun!

Remember it’s not only about the money, it’s about the experience and that will serve you, your mental health, and your bank account the best.

Christen Shaker

How to be a Traveling Nurse

How to be a traveling nurse