Travel in Boston

[LaurenBlair]

Hi Everyone :)

I will be starting my 1st travel assignment in Boston within a couple weeks. I'm afraid I got the low-end of the pay scale.....$28/hr with no diff + housing stipend. Is this the norm for Boston? Regardless, I'm still excited and it should be quite the experience!

[HDFXDWGRN]

"Pay rates for staff in union heavy Boston rivals San Francisco and can top out over $70 an hour. But like San Francisco, housing costs eat into the agency bill rate, cutting your hourly. Working in other parts of Massachusetts often end up being more lucrative than Boston. Springfield or Worcester for example."

Yes both areas have unions, California's has much more influence than any in Massachusetts.

Pay rates in Boston do not rival San Francisco for New Grads or otherwise.

As for agency bill rates, I don't think they are the same in Boston and Springfield. The two are different markets. As for Springfield and Worcester being more lucrative, that would depend on what you can negotiate with the company. The agency does anything they can to pay the nurse less, like say that housing costs eat into the bill rate.

Again to quote you, "we are talking about travel assignments"

But you stated pay rates for staff nurses in your post.

No staff nurse I worked with in Boston was making $70 an hour, not even the ones that had been there 30+ years.

I'll find the link for the UCSF RN pay scale when I get to a desktop and you let me know where a Boston nurse makes anywhere close to the money on it.

[NevadaFighter, BSN, RN]

Thank you for the info! Massachusetts board of nursing severely botched my name, didn't see it until my license came in the mail. This is delaying my assignment in MA, so looks like I'll be trying for it in the Spring! Thanks to the idget who misspelled my name! It was an error on their end- they even pulled out my original application to make sure it wasn't me who misspelled it (yeah, after 30 years, I forgot how to spell my name! haha).

Who did you contact to correct the error? I'm in Illinois, but I'm having trouble finding out how get my name corrected.

[AllyRN82, MSN, APRN]

I contacted the Massachusetts board of nursing directly. They transferred me to the appropriate people, and I was informed to send in my misspelled license and they would correct it. After exactly 21 days (that's the amount of time they say it will take to get to you, and that's how long mine took), I got it in the mail and overnighted it back to the address they gave me. It was corrected with the MA board of nursing within 24 hours, and I now have a valid license.

I'm not sure about the contact information for Illinois board of nursing, but I found MA board of nursing contact info on their website. I just did a search for their nursing board and it was the first link on the search results.

I hope that's a helpful answer.

[NevadaFighter, BSN, RN]

Thank you!