There has been a perfect storm brewing for those interested in travel nursing. At least 25% of current RNs are approaching retirement age. There are more than 60 million baby boomers to be cared for. By 2025, there will be a nursing shortage of about 260,000 RNs. Those things added up equal a perfect opportunity for travel nurses to step in and fill those gaps.

Additionally, most states require a certain patient-to-nurse ratio, and with hospital budgets being drastically reduced due to the recession, often times hospitals are not able to maintain those ratios because they are unable to afford a more robust full-time nursing staff. This is another opportunity for a travel nurse, especially during peak times of RN need such as flu season. Travel nurses are able to step in and help hospitals and other medical facilities meet those requirements and ensure that patients are properly cared for.

The benefits of travel nursing go far beyond “filling the gap.” Travel nurses are able to experience many new cities at little-to-no out-of-pocket cost in addition to making an excellent income. Travel nurses are also able to meet new people and experience new lifestyles and culture on a regular basis. Some traveling nurses say that this is one of the best aspects of the job. If you are interested in travel nursing or simply want more information, visit TravelNurseSource.com.

By Terry McDermott

As is painfully obvious to members of the travel nursing industry, the demand for travel nurses has declined significantly. This downturn in demand is directly related to the current economic conditions which has forced many nurses back into the workforce and prompted many travel nurses to seek permanent positions. Consequently, there are less job openings and less need for travel nurses to fill gaps during the hiring process or during seasonal upswings.

This situation is a relief for hospital staffing administrators as the pool of available nursing candidates expands and openings are filled quickly and with high quality personnel. But the apparent easing of the ongoing nursing shortage could be a smokescreen that worsens the situation down the road.

According to an article in Modern Healthcare, more than a few healthcare executives are concerned that the current abundant pool of nurse candidates could present a false sense of security among administrators and send the wrong signal to those who aspire to a nursing career.

A quote from the Chief Nursing Officer of Providence Health & Services provides keen insight into the challenges facing healthcare employers.  Said Deborah Burton, CNO at Providence, “To those who don’t take the long view in workforce planning, it looks like everything is better—when, in fact, nothing could be further from the truth.”

The article cites numerous statistics that make it very clear that the current situation is better but the nursing shortage is far from being solved. In fact, the significant decline in job openings for nurses could have the effect of worsening the problem in the long run. Those nurses having difficulty finding a position could leave the profession and students hearing about the lack of opportunities may decide to pursue a different career. This could prove disastrous given the demographic trends in both the general and nursing populations.

The simple fact is that the baby boomers will be taxing the healthcare system as they age. And with the average age of an RN pushing 50 years old, it is not hard to project that patient census will be going up and the nursing population will be going down as more nurses hit retirement age.  If the current employment situation discourages students from pursuing a nursing career, there will be major challenges in the future.

I strongly encourage you to read this article in Modern Healthcare. Our feeling is that, even though it is more challenging finding travel nursing jobs right now, the nursing shortage has just been temporarily camouflaged and may be worse than ever when the economy turns around.

To quote Cynthia Kinnis, president of the healthcare staffing division at Clinical One, “Administrators who have been around for a long time will know that it always comes back with a vengeance.”

Bad news for healthcare administrators. Good news for travel nurses!  Pursue a career as a travel nurse and find your travel nursing job today!  Or take a minute to learn more about the nursing shortage.

http://www.modernhealthcare.com/article/20090518/SUB/905159977

Terry McDermott is VP of Marketing for Travel Nurse Source, a recruiting company for traveling nurses. Travel Nurse Source is affiliated with Allied Travel Careers, a recruiting company for traveling physical therapists, occupational therapists, and speech language pathologists. For more information on what we do, please visit our websites.

By Erica Ronchetti

It’s no secret that the healthcare industry is becoming increasingly demanding for nurses and traveling nurses, who must now care for the rising numbers of aging baby boomers and other health care demanders.  In contrast, the number of prospective nurses and nursing students who will become professional nurses and travel nurses is decreasing, despite the growing community of people who require health care and medical assistance.  Travel nurse agencies have been a remedy for this widening gap between patients, nurses, and travel nurses.  They provide nursing staff for hospitals and other healthcare services, and fulfill both patients and facilities needs.

Many schools and universities are experiencing a significant shortage of students who are studying to become professional nurses.  There are insufficient numbers of these students compared to the increasing demands of the United States population and their projected healthcare needs.  Over past years, there has been little to no maintenance of nursing student enrollment levels, and now 73% of Americans acknowledge that this shortage of nurses is a concern, and one that is on the rise.

Companies like Travel Nurse Source and other travel nursing agencies have been developed to address this growing need for healthcare professionals and provide solutions for nurses who are interested in traveling and healthcare facilities who need to fill staffing gaps. Travel Nurse Source operates with the nursing shortage directly in mind, staffing hospitals and facilities across the country to prevent the worsening nursing shortage in the USA. Travel nurse agencies are not a new occurrence; they’ve been in existence for almost two decades with the aim to solve staffing shortages, mainly in facilities that have employee and population turnover based on the seasonal changes.

In light of the nursing shortage, pursuing a career as a travel nurse or finding travel nurse employment has become a good opportunity for stability and professional growth.  Travel nurses can travel all over the US and nursing assignments last from 90 days up to six months, depending on the specific contract.  The travel nursing job can be in a variety of states or regions and facilities, and that is up to the nurse to choose.  Salaries for nurses who choose a travel nursing career tend to be on average, higher then nurses who stay in one location or healthcare venue.  Excelling housing benefits go along with the competitive salary, as well as health insurance, retirement plans, and other benefits that travel nurse agencies offer.

Companies like Travel Nurse Source are indeed valuable assets for the healthcare industry.  To learn more about travel nursing jobs and travel nurse employment, visit our website!  Travel Nurse Source offers exciting travel nursing employment opportunities, such as travel nurse jobs Hawaii, California travel nursing, Florida travel nursing, New York travel nursing, and travel nursing in Alaska!

Erica Ronchetti is Account Manager for Travel Nurse Source, a recruiting company for traveling nurses.  Travel Nurse Source is affiliated with Allied Travel Careers, a recruiting company for traveling physical therapists, occupational therapists, and speech language pathologists.  For more information on what we do, please visit our websites.

By Erica Ronchetti

If you’ve avoided travel nursing jobs because you were unwilling to leave your loved ones behind, then be sure to read this article.  Not only do travel nurses get to visit many exciting locations and meet new people all over the country, they can do so while earning a considerable salary.  Re-location can be pretty frequent as travel assignments typically run for about 13 weeks.  The good news is despite the relatively long  time span of assignments, many travel nurse agencies do take into account that nurses have families and are willing to work out arrangements that are accommodating.

If you have children, you can still be a successful travel nurse. There are even advantages to travel nursing that will positively affect your children’s lives, such as providing them the opportunity to experience many parts of the country.  While your children get to travel, your successful nursing career will provide you with an excellent salary and benefits.  Travel nursing salaries are usually 10%-15% higher than typical pay of regular staff nurses. In addition to the higher salary, recruiting agencies are sometimes able to provide free housing for your family, or assist you in locating additional rooms or alternative housing for family members.

Other agencies try to provide travel nurses with placements customized to their individual lifestyles and requirements, such as flexible shift times that allow them to spend more time with their families.  Often times travel nurses choose to home school their children and married couples who both travel have the option to arrange their work schedules so that one of them is home to take care of kids while the other is on a travel nursing assignment.  There are even some travel nurse jobs that last up to 9 months so that a child would be able to attend the same school for an entire year.  It’s possible that with some research and scheduling, a traveling nurse can have a great career while raising their family.

Due to the ongoing nursing shortage, there is a huge demand for qualified nurses nationwide. Many healthcare staffing agencies and travel nurse recruiting agencies are looking to hire qualified travel nurses to fill in staffing positions, and finding adequate housing for nurses and families is not a difficult task.  Extra needs and requirements, such as pets and larger spaces can easily be accommodated.  Don’t hesitate to learn more about travel nursing and the great benefits that go along with it:  great compensation, excellent health care coverage, and many others.  If you’re currently a travel nurse or would like to find out more information about travel nursing jobs, now is an excellent time to pursue this fast growing and popular health field.

Erica Ronchetti is Account Manager for Travel Nurse Source, a recruiting company for traveling nurses.  Travel Nurse Source is affiliated with Allied Travel Careers, a recruiting company for traveling physical therapists, occupational therapists, and speech language pathologists.  For more information on what we do, please visit our websites.

By Christine Whitmarsh, RN, BSN

Going, going gone, are the days when one general family medicine practitioner could solve all or most of a patient’s health problems. As patient needs become more specialized, there is an increased need for specialized medicine. Except with the current financial crunch, the exact opposite is happening.

The combination of an economic downturn across the health care industry and a rising shortage of nurses, travel nurses and other health care providers, is leading some hospitals to close or downsize specialty departments. In interviews earlier this year, some CFOs at various Southern California hospitals told me about bed reductions in their facility’s sub-acute areas. Elsewhere in this country and over the border in Canada, hospitals are closing or reducing services in other specialty departments such as obstetrics, for similar financial reasons. Cutbacks and closures in hospitals are always a jarring reminder that even though human lives are at stake health care is a business just like any other.

This makes for a very interesting and somewhat contradictory situation for nurses and travel nursing jobs. On one hand, the nursing shortage (depending on which reports you follow) means that nurses and traveling nurses are needed to staff positions in all areas of hospitals, specialty departments included. On the other hand, the economic downturn and department cutbacks make it a strain for hospitals to hire and compensate those nurses.  Travel nurses could be the difference in keeping hospitals viable and accessible to the people who need them the most. Contracting nurses for shorter assignments through travel nurse agency allows hospitals some staffing flexibility without any long term commitments or benefits. In other words, it just may be the best solution for hospitals to avoid closing or reducing department beds while testing the economic waters and attempting to ride out the storm.

Christine Whitmarsh is a Registered Nurse with a BSN from the University of Rhode Island. She is a freelance health journalist and medical writer and a contributor to Travel Nurse Source and Allied Travel Careers.

By Christine Whitmarsh, RN, BSN

Perhaps it was last week’s tea parties or possibly the recent message by radio and television personality Glenn Beck that we’re not alone and “we surround them” (referring to the political decision makers). Or maybe it was the recent associated press article discussing how the massive group of 50 million uninsured Americans see themselves as individuals, each down on their own respective luck. Is it because health care is such a personal topic to discuss as well as how it connects to one’s financial status? Is the same true for nurses and travel nurses?

Nurses, especially travel nurses, are an excellent example of the “I’m all alone” phenomenon. Doesn’t it sometimes seem as if nurses are more prone to competitiveness than camaraderie? It is all too easy to feel alone, especially in the midst of challenging situations versus feeling connected to other people in the same situations. For instance, I have observed many travel nurses connecting by message boards to express their concerns about being replaced by outsourced foreign-trained nurses. I applaud these traveling nurses for starting this dialogue and even more so for continuing it with each other. Travel nursing is a profession where, without good support systems, a nurse might endlessly feel like the new kid on the block. Forging friendships and online connections with other travel nurses, through this site or travel nursing message boards, is a reminder that you’re not alone. There are many other nurses facing the same challenges and asking the same questions that you are. Also, in the spirit of “power through numbers”, travel nurses have an extremely loud collective voice. A picket line or elections are not the only forums for using that voice.

As the uninsured and unemployed grow in numbers I can only hope they start reaching out to one another, using their collective voice as a majority and most importantly realizing that they are not alone. I hope that nurses and travel nurses continue doing the same thing. Nurses have an up close, personal view of health care that consumers, politicians and the public in general are not privy to. I learned the dangers of the word “assume” as a nursing student. Let’s not assume that we’re alone, that we have no power and that the health care industry surrounds the nurses, when it’s the other way around.

Christine Whitmarsh is a Registered Nurse with a BSN from the University of Rhode Island. She is a freelance health journalist and medical writer and a contributor to Travel Nurse Source and Allied Travel Careers.

By Christine Whitmarsh, RN, BSN

As the U.S. makes it a priority to fill empty nursing positions by any means possible, the Philippines appears to have made exporting travel nurses into a business.  I mentioned in a prior blog how the Philippines is a prominent supplier of nurses to America (despite reports that many U.S. trained travel nurses remain unemployed). A Finland newspaper, discussing travel nursing, mentioned how “the Philippines deliberately trains more nurses than it has nursing jobs available for”, with the intention of exporting those nurses to countries experiencing nursing shortages. The business of exporting Filipino nurses financially benefits the country, as the traveling nurses send money earned back to their homeland. The U.S. is reportedly the top destination for exported travel nurses, not just from the Philippines but also from European and Asian nations, with our nation’s demand for nurses on the rise. Minority Nurse.com even reports that physicians trained in the Philippines are switching careers to nursing in order to benefit from job opportunities in the U.S. and abroad.

Travel nursing is also a successful business here in the states, theoretically even more so during times of shortages like the U.S. is currently experiencing.  However, the data related to travel nursing and the exporting of nurses from the Philippines appears to reflect a solid business model. This model has been utilized and improved upon since its inception in 1950. Since that time Filipino nurses traveling to the states have successfully conquered issues such as language barriers, cultural differences and discrepancies in training and education.

What could our country’s travel nursing model learn from the Filipino model? Should nursing be treated more as an import and export business if it means helping to solve the nursing shortage? As a travel nurse, what are your thoughts on accepting assignments overseas versus here in the states?

Sources: Helsingin Sanomat, Minoritynurse.com, American Nurses Association

Christine Whitmarsh is a Registered Nurse with a BSN from the University of Rhode Island. She is a freelance health journalist and medical writer and a contributor to Travel Nurse Source and Allied Travel Careers.

By Christine Whitmarsh, RN, BSN

Patient discharge teaching is one of the most important parts of the cycle of care and by no means is it the end of the care plan. Unfortunately due to short staffing, heavy patient loads and all around time management issues, discharge teaching can turn into skimming through the discharge papers, hurriedly asking the patient and their family if they have any questions and getting their signature on the dotted line. The signature is intended to indicate their understanding of the instructions for follow-up and transition care. According to a well-publicized study by the New England Journal of Medicine earlier this month, however, there may be more signing than understanding happening as patients are leaving the hospital. The study revealed that 1 out of every 5 Medicare patients is back in the hospital within 30 days of being discharged (1 in 3 within 90 days).

Many different reasons for the readmissions were cited, including lack of a primary care physician outside the hospital, nosocomial infections presumably acquired during their initial stay and the basic fact that elderly patients are increasingly suffering from a mixture of conditions and diagnoses. If Medicaid coverage was designed to make patients completely “well” again, it would likely be facing even more financial challenges than it already is.

Those are factors are somewhat less controllable than the patient discharge teaching component, also mentioned in the study. It would be turning a blind eye if the connection between the nursing shortage and the time required for adequate patient teaching was not addressed. When there are not enough hours in a shift and not enough of you to go around, it’s easy to see a discharge as one less patient to take care of. This may seem somewhat heartless, but as the staffing shortage increases, so does the challenge of prioritizing patient care. The travel nursing industry is making great strides in helping hospitals (or in some cases loudly offering help) with staffing shortages. Travel nurses can be the difference in nurse to patient ratio that allow patients to receive the discharge teaching they need to avoid readmission due to misunderstanding of the treatment regimen.

Christine Whitmarsh is a Registered Nurse with a BSN from the University of Rhode Island. She is a freelance health journalist and medical writer and a contributor to Travel Nurse Source and Allied Travel Careers.

By Christine Whitmarsh, RN, BSN

Now is the time to review your travel nursing agency’s policy on overtime along with your current assignment contract. One of the temporary fixes for the nursing shortage that appears to be benefiting both staff and travel nurses is increased opportunities for working lucrative overtime hours (double time in some rare cases). Since the pay scale for traveling nurses is predominantly higher than it is for staff nurses overtime has the potential of catapulting the travel nurse into an entirely new salary bracket – the six figure kind.

If you’re looking for assignment destinations, travel nursing assignments in California are among the highest paying nursing positions in the country. California is among the states with the greatest need for nurses to staff the state’s abundance of hospitals. At some hospitals in the Sacramento area, for instance, overtime rates, take effect after 8 hours.

Questions about a hospital’s overtime policy are some of the most important ones to ask your recruiting contact prior to starting a new assignment.  It is also important to remember that hospitals are facing the same economic downturn as the rest of us. Asking about a hospital’s overtime policy, in the midst of your other questions, is entirely different than “demanding” overtime pay. Discuss the matter of working extra shifts and how you will be reimbursed (hospital or agency) with your travel nurse recruiter. Your agency can also assist you with the rest of your pre-assignment checklist, including important questions to ask your new nurse manager.

Travel Nurses: How do you handle the issue of overtime hours and reimbursement? What kinds of experiences, positive and negative, are you experiencing in regards to overtime hours to help with the nursing shortage?

Christine Whitmarsh is a Registered Nurse with a BSN from the University of Rhode Island. She is a freelance health journalist and medical writer and a contributor to Travel Nurse Source and Allied Travel Careers.

By Christine Whitmarsh, RN, BSN

A significant contributing factor to the nursing shortage is the nursing school bottleneck. It’s not that the high schools aren’t producing enough graduates with career aspirations of nursing or travel nursing for the free-spirits with a passion for seeing the country. The shortage in nursing schools starts at the front of the class. A nursing education is not suited for a mass lecture format, particularly during clinicals when several students are working on one often anxious instructor’s license. Therefore, not enough instructors means a painfully high number of rejection letters to qualified nursing school applicants.

The New York City Council announced earlier this year that the City University of New York is working with several NYC hospitals on a guest faculty program aimed at providing nursing school professors, even if temporarily. The program will identify experienced nurses already working in the city’s hospitals who wouldn’t mind a temporary teaching assignment. A major benefit of the program is that the hospital nurses don’t have to quit their jobs or lose their benefits. The ten guest nursing faculty positions are projected to allow 100 new nursing students to enter the program each year.

Although technically this program attempts to remedy one of the root causes of the nursing shortage by creating a minor shortage of NYC hospital staff, the intention is a good one. If this type of program succeeds and is implemented in other cities, two possible opportunities for travel nurses may result. First, as temporary replacements for the hospital nurses turned professors. Second, experienced travel nurses might consider contacting participating schools between assignments and during down time, to apply for some of the guest faculty positions.

Solving the nursing shortage is going to be a complex undertaking that is unlikely to be solved by signing on the dotted line of a massive stimulus bill. With an estimated half a million nurses needed by 2016, the health care industry will have to look at every resource available, from foreign trained nurses (as they have been for years) and travel nurses to unclogging the nursing school bottleneck and graduating more nurses. Travel nurse agencies and other travel RN recruiters now have the opportunity to fight on behalf of their travel nurses. They can remind hospitals that using travel nurses is an excellent solution to short staffing, and that it’s a solution available now.

Christine Whitmarsh is a Registered Nurse with a BSN from the University of Rhode Island. She is a freelance health journalist and medical writer and a contributor to Travel Nurse Source and Allied Travel Careers.