By Erica Ronchetti

Before signing up to travel the United States as a travel nurse, there are several important things you may be interested to know. Travel nursing can be extremely rewarding as well as enjoyable; a paid vacation to the beaches of Hawaii and California is certainly appealing but before departing on your next travel nursing job, take a minute to read the following information.

Salary is very different from typical hospital employment.  Travel nurses are paid significantly higher hourly wages then staff nurses who work at hospitals.  The reason travel nurses are paid larger salaries is because of the “sacrifices” they make to uproot their lives and work away from their families and homes.   Placed in an attractive location, many nurses don’t see their travel nursing assignment as sacrifices, and many enjoy their days off enjoying gorgeous scenery, excellent weather, and interesting culture.  When negotiating salary with your travel nurse agency, make sure they are willing to negotiate the highest rate of pay before you sign any contracts to a travel nursing assignment.  Certainly don’t feel pressured to accept the first travel offer that comes your way; you may be able to find a better one.  It might be good to compare different agencies and select the one willing to assist your move, provide you with a competitive salary, and perhaps even a monthly housing stipend.

Here are some important questions to consider asking your travel nurse agency before starting a travel nursing assignment:

1.     Does the travel nurse agency I’m considering guarantee my travel assignment in writing?
2.    What hours will I be working?  Are these hours guaranteed?
3.    How often will I get paid?  (Weekly, bi-weekly, etc…)
4.    Will the travel nurse agency help me pay for my move?

Travel nurses with experience:  do you agree or disagree? If you’re an experienced travel nurse and can provide any additional information or useful questions novice travel nurses might need to know, don’t hesitate to post a response or comment.

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

Just as little kids mull over the possibilities of what they want to be when they grow up, nursing students custom design their dream career. A few years on the med-surg floor first, then perhaps a move into the ER or ICU, followed by a return trip back to school for a Master’s degree and later on a nurse practitioner career. Nurses with a wandering spirit are more likely to map out a career as a travel nurse, combining medical specialties with coveted work destinations. The beauty of travel nursing jobs is that they are listed the same way. Are you a skier or a surfer? Would you rather be a travel ER nurse in Denver or traveling CCU RN in California? Are you into bright lights big city or the quiet relaxation of a smaller town setting? Your dream career might be as an ICU nurse in Dallas or a labor and delivery nurse in Alaska. If you’re having trouble making up your mind then travel nursing is definitely the right field for you. Short assignments and diverse staffing needs around the country make indecisiveness a perfectly acceptable trait in a travel nurse. How many other fields is this true for?

In a tight economy and even tighter job market, few people have the luxury of custom designing their dream job. Even with the budding nursing shortage, travel nurses have to be savvy about signing with the traveling nurse agency that best represents their interests and consistently following up on potential assignments.

If you need reassurance, remember that a career in nursing still has more flexibility and options than most other fields of work right now. Nobody is ever handed their dream job on a silver platter, especially in tough times. But that doesn’t mean you need to stop dreaming and stop seeking the nursing career that you mapped out for yourself in nursing school. As a travel nurse you might even get from point A to point B a little bit faster.

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

If you’re a regular reader of the blogs here on travel nurse source, please give me some credit that I’ve been a TNS blogger for several months now and this is my first “top ten list”. During that time, I have had the opportunity to research travel nursing, speak with and receive feedback from veteran travel nurses and those who have just gotten their feet wet in this exciting area of nursing. As a result, I have devised a list of characteristics that I believe make up the perfect candidate for a career in travel nursing.

1. Clearly – a love of travel. This does not necessarily mean that you have to be a “road trip” person or an aspiring jetsetter. After all, you are only traveling between assignments, which are typically three months long. Some travel nurses prefer to life an RV-based lifestyle, meeting new people in RV communities around the country. Others prefer to enjoy the furnished housing provided by travel nurse agencies with the assignment. The common denominator is the travel nurse’s willingness to live for the experience more than coming home to the same house of “stuff” every night.

2. A flexible and understanding family. Despite the misconception that travel nursing is only for single people, there are several examples I have heard about where an understanding spouse and adventurous offspring can turn a travel nursing career into a never ending family adventure. Most families have to save up for road trips across the U.S.A. Travel nurses and their families get paid to travel.

3. A passion for experiencing new towns, suburbs and big cities (depending on your preference). During my interview with veteran travel nurse Epstein LaRue, she mentioned that the first thing that she and her husband do upon arriving in a new town is to travel one hour in each direction, exploring. I can’t say that her adventures didn’t make me a little jealous.

4. Speaking of the job part. Travel nursing assignments seem ideal for the nurse with a short attention span. If you don’t feel the need to get to know your colleagues – nurses, doctors, etc. – for more than a few months, a career as a travel nurse is ideal.

5. Love to learn? Technology, procedures and treatment techniques move so fast in health care that traveling from hospital to hospital around the country might just be the only way to keep up. Nurses are usually natural born learners and bookworms, and a career in travel nursing capitalizes on this curiosity for knowledge and new experiences.

The irony is that the list above describes many nurses currently working in permanent positions. My feeling is that most nurses, especially new graduates, either don’t realize that this is accessible to them or are weighted down with misconceptions they have heard about a career in travel nursing. In reality, a good traveling nurse agency recruiter has some flexibility in customizing a travel nurse career based on the nurse’s experience, career goals and lifestyle. This is an excellent time to contact a recruiter to discuss questions and concerns about a career as a travel nurse.

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

Literacy is no longer exclusively a problem for teachers to address. Nurses and especially travel nurses who travel to certain regions and communities are also facing language and health literacy issues while treating patients.

The importance of reading the fine print has been ingrained in the mind of anyone who has ever read a contract. But for ailing or injured patients and their loved ones, taking the time to fully understand what they are signing, especially in the ER or pre-operatively, pales in priority to getting well. Unfortunately the legalities and contractual intricacies of healthcare leave little room for flexibility and patient sympathy in these situations. Even if they do not fully understand what they are signing, once they sign on the dotted line patients are usually held liable for the legal and insurance policy consequences of what they are signing. Several incidences of patient outcry when it came time to face those consequences, have led providers and administrator to start aggressively addressing the issue of “health literacy” in patients. Health literacy educational forums are starting to pop up around the country for both patients and also for nurses, to teach them how much or little their patients really understand about what’s going on around them during a medical emergency.

In certain geographic areas, where English is often the patient’s second language, the issue of healthcare literacy is compounded by language literacy. Travel nurses who have worked in such communities, such as Texas, California, and Arizona may have a unique understanding of what it’s like to care for a patient while also handling a language barrier. Healthcare literacy along with regional ESL-related issues requires the travel nurse to have a heightened awareness of their patients’ level of comprehension. The bottom line is that when a patient is sick all that’s on their mind is getting well again. Nurses and travel nurses are in an excellent position to make sure that once the patient is well again, they won’t be faced with the fallout from consenting to treatment in the first place.

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.

Christine Whitmarsh, RN, BSN

Electronic charting, massive shortages, overworked, overtime, overstressed, insurance red tape, politics, on the floor and on Capitol Hill are more than topics covered on this nursing blog and many others like it. This is the modern day reality of a career in nursing. Travel nurses can take solace in the fact that at least they can experience life in exciting destinations around the country, managing the job description of modern day RN in shorter doses. The fact is, however, that nursing has the distinction of being a rapidly changing field that remains rooted in the values that must never change in nursing.  In other words – Florence Nightingale, meet Jane Jetson.

Looking around today’s hospital “wards”, it is sometimes difficult to see the patients, the human beings needing care, behind all the beeping, flashing machines, closed doors versus open ward settings, steady parade of other collaborating caregivers, specific legal demands of documentation and other necessary distractions that separate nurse from patient. Nursing pioneer and “lady with the lamp” Florence Nightingale managed to sort through the chaotic, deadly conditions of a war hospital, spot the biggest problems and provide effective solutions. Admittedly, when there aren’t enough nurses to go around and nursing hands are often tied by various shades of red tape, it can be difficult to stay focused on the people in the beds versus the data on the cart.

Nightingale inspired many young women to enter the practice of nursing, through her inspired example as a caregiver, critical thinker and statistician specializing in identifying the data that is resulting in illness and death, and coming up with solutions. Isn’t this what remains at the heart of nursing, even with the beeping and flashing? This is often difficult to remember, especially during those moments of you-know-what storms (says one who has been there). It’s like trying to sit down and read a good book in the middle of a tornado.

Remember that to the patients, nurses are more than a frazzled marathon runner in scrubs, sometimes fighting just to survive the shift. The journalist from ‘The Times’ who coined the “lady with the lamp” phrase, made this observation:

“She is a ‘ministering angel’ without any exaggeration in these hospitals, and as her slender form glides quietly along each corridor, every poor fellow’s face softens with gratitude at the sight of her. When all the medical officers have retired for the night and silence and darkness have settled down upon those miles of prostrate sick, she may be observed alone, with a little lamp in her hand, making her solitary round.”

Reference: Wikipedia.org

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

One of the most effective pieces in the state of Vermont’s innovative model of healthcare allows long term care, elderly and patients with disabilities more choices than they would normally be offered under traditional Medicaid. The program, called “Choices for Care”, gives individuals who would normally receive a nursing home bed access to alternatives such as home care. The state has also used their 2005 waiver granted by the Bush administration to implement other consumer-driven, cost-saving changes to their Medicaid program.  All of the state’s changes have been met with resounding consumer satisfaction (in the 90 percent range).  Is it just me or does Vermont’s Medicaid model fall more under the description of customized healthcare than universal healthcare?

Offering consumers the choice between nursing homes and staying in their own home, is a powerful reminder that at one point in history, universal healthcare and home care were one in the same.  Travel nursing occurred when the designated “nurse”, elder healer or town doctor would travel up and down dirt roads from home to home with their bag of medical tools or simple home remedies. It is refreshing to see that when given the choice between facility and home, most Medicaid consumers in Vermont chose to stay home and be cared for by their families, with regular visits by registered nurses and other healthcare professionals (modern day healers). Perhaps the real key to universal healthcare is remembering the universal needs of patients when given the choice. As nurses we learn that the most effective patient teaching occurs when the patient is given a voice in the process, rather than simply being dictated to.

I am curious to see what other states of taken Vermont’s lead in implementing unique healthcare models that work.  Travel nurses: What are the most innovative ways of emphasizing consumer choice that you have seen in various states, cities and hospitals?

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

Preexisting conditions are a part of life. In fact, some say that simply being born qualifies as a preexisting medical condition. Yet it has been a traditional part of health insurance practice to charge higher premiums for individuals with any significant medical history and in some cases deny them coverage all together. This type of policy has been a long standing source of tension between insurance companies and healthcare providers. Nurses in particular are on the frontlines of some sticky insurance situations, in which delivering excellent patient care is the priority and is what they are trained to do, but the ‘red tape’ of insurance seems to be preventing them from doing their jobs. Travel nurses have no doubt seen similar incarnations of this situation from assignment to assignment throughout the country.  The good news, for staff and travel RNs alike, is that health insurance companies are finally seeing the light and indicating a willingness to change their rigid ways.

Faced with the prospect of losing customers to the “free” universal health insurance proposed by the Obama administration, major insurance providers such as Blue Cross and Blue Shield stated in a public letter recently published by the associated press, that they would be “willing to phase out the practice of varying premiums based on health status in the individual market if all Americans are required to get coverage.” I guess if it’s not possible to make patient care their motivation for this flexibility, this is the next best thing. The concept of “universal healthcare” has been touted since the Clinton administration (Bill, not Hillary), yet it is worth noting that this appears to be the first public concessionary reaction on the part of private insurance companies.

Registered nurses and RNs on travel assignment throughout our nation’s hospitals understand the importance of health insurance that covers patients during the time they need it the most. Ironically, or not so, it is patients with pertinent medical history such as diabetes, high blood pressure and other conditions that significantly alter an individual’s quality of life, who require the most medical care. Time will only tell if a healthy dose of competition between private and government insurance will benefit patients and the dedicated nurses and travel nurses who care for them.

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 care charting is a standard and often time consuming part of every nurse’s shift.  Travel nurses can add the task of learning charting systems at new hospital assignments.  Digital charting is the much publicized solution that would be a timesaver for nurses and other clinicians, and because of improved clarity and continuity of care, a potential lifesaver for patients.  Digital charting systems may not be entirely universal, but with the similarities in various computer interfaces available to hospitals, travel nurses would surely see the benefits from assignment to assignment.

During his term in office, President Bush set a goal of 2014 for all hospitals and medical facilities to convert patient records from paper to digital.  The publicity coming from hospitals across the country may have us believe that most facilities have already made the switch and are happily charting digitally well ahead of the 2014 goal.  However, a national survey published in a March issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, reveals startling information.  Only 8-11 percent of hospitals have converted from paper charting to even basic digital systems (meaning at least one department has made the switch).  President Obama and his administration have promised $19 billion (that’s billion with a “b” for those of you following the financial news) to help the other approximately 90 percent of America’s hospitals make the switch to digital. This seems like a logical solution, since the major reason cited by the hospitals who haven’t gone digital, is funding for the massive technological undertaking.

With many hospitals already in the red because of the economic downturn, the prospect of dishing out more money for a new project of this size is probably an extremely painful one to add to the budget. For the nurses, travel nurses and others who work directly with patients and not budget spreadsheets there is no question that digital charting and recordkeeping will allow them to spend more time where they are needed most, with patients.

Travel Nurses: How do your observations of hospitals using digital charting and/or recordkeeping compare with the statistics in this report? Which do you prefer – digital or paper? I value your feedback.

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.