Winter travel assignments

Specialties Travel

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So I'm new to travel nursing. Doing my first assignment in PA ($1500). I herd that's actually low for tele/Stepdown/ICU. I was wondering what's a good place to do travel assignments from November to February/March? I have options of Florida, Pennsylvania, California, Colorado, Oregon, Washington state, Alaska licenses. What's a good place to maybe look at and how much is the lowest I should look at taking? I'm noticing with this assignment I'm spending like 400 a week on housing leaving with 100 a week left over. A Per De. of $350 a week and a pay of $18 a hour. Is this moral?

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Moral? Legal to be sure. Most people don't appear to know this, but you are allowed to gift the IRS any amount you wish if you have feelings of largess to America or simply feel guilty. Such gifts are not tax deductible unfortunately.

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It sounds to me like you are paying a lot for housing in that particular area. From my experience, the pay rates in Florida will be fairly low and California will be highest. The problem is, housing is quite expensive in California. And if you don't yet have a California license you should know that it takes quite a while to get a California endorsement.

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Your right. It took me forever to get a license in California. I have considered going there in November. Or maybe Colorado, Alaska, Oregon, Washington state or staying in PA. I'm not sure hat I should do though? Housing is expensive and I thought of I asked maybe someone would have tips or advice on picking assignments or other things

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Specializes in ICU, and IR.

If you are looking for the money just ask your recruiters where they have crisis rates or tell them what you want your gross to be and only take that much. However what I prefer to do is look in areas I want to go. During that time of year you might consider the upper northeast. NH or VT is great during November and if you get the right assignment you could take the train to Boston, NYC, Baltimore, and D.C among other places. I just took the train to NYC for a vacation and it only cost $50 per person from Baltimore. Also in those areas you can drive into Canada for vacation too.

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New England is even better in the autumn. I'd try to be there by September 1.

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I'm going to be on a assignment until November 11th but I will see if I can get up there after

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On a Hawaii assignment, I made $40/hr with housing 100% paid. The facility also treated me like an employee and I earned sick and vacation time. Came home with an additional 2K pay off for that.

Your current agency is definitely lowballing you.

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Thank you for the heads up. It does seem like I'm only getting the offers for $1300-$1500 max. I will see about Hawaii for sure. I need to apply there and pass my psych cert and ICU cert on this assignment so

maybe I can look into another company next time.

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So I started at this hospital yesterday. It's a nice little area. Friendly people and the scenery is wonderful with all the hills and historic houses. I'm staying at one of the little local hotels until my airBnB is ready on the 23rd. The hotel is the only thing I truly don't like so far. For 150 a day I would think the Internet would work and the doors to get inside of the building would lock but they don't. Anyone can wander the halls, the hospital is small and nice with good support staff. They didn't even make me take their tele test or progressive care/ICU test seeing as I will be floating between the two. The technology for charting is way outdated as is the Med carts but I can handle that. I have high hopes for this assignment and I'm glad it will allow me some off time to study for my CCRN. Then after having that and finishing this assignment I'm not sure what location I could end up next. I have a Florida ,Pennsylvania and California license. And I'm waiting to my Colorado, Oregon and Washington state ones to come through. Any tips my experienced people have about anything as always will be greatly appreciated. í ½í¸Š

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Glad it is working out! Also nice to read positive posts!

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Specializes in ICU, and IR.

Getting your first assignment under your belt is better anyway, after that offers should be better. Remember you can negotiate your contract too. Also some recruiters like to tell you the hourly rate as blended or effective rate or whatever term they are using this week, meaning they take the taxable hourly rate and combine it with your M&I to equal a combined hourly rate. That's fine but make sure you are comparing apples to apples. If your company does this make sure you know that that's how they do it. That way when you compare you know the difference.

1) get competing offers for an area from more than 1 agency

2) negotiate for what you want.

3) Tell your recruiters I want to make $x money per week. For me that number is no less than $1800 week take home

4) Out west will pay better but its good you are asking the right questions.

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