Traveling Nurses – For Those Who Love Travelling and Helping People
Discover the World While Growing your Career
Traveling nurses are for those nurses who love to travel and do not settle down in one city for long stints of time. During each short-term stay, which typically lasts an average of 2 through 6 months, your employer (usually a traveling nurses agency) picks up the bill for most of your expenses. This includes the cost of travel to different regions when needed, help with setting up a residence and with the costs and other various expenditures.
Usually you will be filling-in in a hospital or clinic where they have lost or lack full-time nurses. Quite often, with good performance, the short term RN job will eventually turn into a full-time permanent job-which means no more traveling and you are allowed to “settle down”–which is pretty often. A traveling nurse will start working in a particular city and does not want to leave her current assignment and place of residence. Maybe he/she found a partner and a myriad of other possibilities. Almost always the nursing agency will help him/her find a full-time permanent job in that city, in these cases.
The Traveling Nurse’s Associations
One of the greatest advantages, most would agree, of joining a traveling nurse’s agency or association is that it is to the direct advantage of the agency to make sure you are happy and are taken care of-financially, residence and other areas of life. This is because they get paid generous sums of money to recruit traveling nurses, and if their service was not up to par, well, they would find it very difficult to find a nurse whose job is highly specialized and cannot be readily outsourced to just anybody.
Other common benefits include full health insurance coverage, dental and 401k. You can look forward to make an average of 27-35 dollars an hour, and that is not even including the housing subsidies and traveling costs incurred. The top-paying jobs are generally in large metro areas, especially cities such as Chicago, Boston, San Francisco and New York-these are areas most often afflicted with shortages.
Getting Started for Newcomers
You may be wondering “If I am just now getting into the nursing field, how do I get into this field?” This answer is quite simple. Your best bet is to have a RN license. Once you have that, the rest is pretty smooth sailing. There are many agencies that will hire RN’s right after they graduate from a 4 year college and have taken the NCLEX. If you have not done so, consider what you could be missing out on–very lucrative and accommodating jobs, the luxury of being able to travel (and practically free), the fact that your skill set is in very high demand (meaning, getting a high quality job with great pay and a job that is one of the most flexible industry-wide).
The most attractive option to most traveling nurses is the notion that they will probably not have to continue venturing from city to city and from hospital to hospital. Agencies are usually more than willing to find you a permanent, full-time job when you are ready to “settle down”.
