Acute travel pay

NurseRies, BSN, RN · Mar 17, 2015

I did not make anywhere near $100/hr as a traveler, and I shopped around a lot of agencies. I did make some good money if I worked overtime. I would say if you find you own housing and take the stipend, you can expect to take home $900-1700 a week depending on your experience and the geographic location. The tricky thing with travel nursing and acute dialysis is that we have a lot of differentials; call back pay, OT, night, evening, weekend. So although the tax free money is great, if you don't have a good base rate for hourly wage, your call back pay will be terrible.

I made that mistake my first assignment. Base rate was $21/hr with all the tax free money it was technically more like $38/hr all added up, but the base rate was $21/hr, meaning that's what is on your pay stub, so call back pay (at time and a half ) was only $33/hr. That is not worth the extra stress. But they go off the taxable wage/rate. Same with OT, who wants to work OT for $33/hr?

So basically, it could be good money if you can negotiate properly, but after talking to 8 agencies, they all pretty much offered the same amount, and it's not much more then you could make in a metro area with experience. Plus benefits are terrible with traveling, no PTO, awful health insurance, no matching, and if you call in sick, usually you owe your agency money. So if you're thinking about traveling, the money days are over... That's what many travel nurses I met told me. You have to do it for the love of travel. You will make enough to live, but you won't make much more then you probably do now, unless you're in a southern state or low-paying state. Many travelers are from Arkansas, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, South Carolina.

Anna S, RN · Mar 26, 2015

I did not make anywhere near $100/hr as a traveler, and I shopped around a lot of agencies. I did make some good money if I worked overtime. I would say if you find you own housing and take the stipend, you can expect to take home $900-1700 a week depending on your experience and the geographic location. The tricky thing with travel nursing and acute dialysis is that we have a lot of differentials; call back pay, OT, night, evening, weekend. So although the tax free money is great, if you don't have a good base rate for hourly wage, your call back pay will be terrible.
I made that mistake my first assignment. Base rate was $21/hr with all the tax free money it was technically more like $38/hr all added up, but the base rate was $21/hr, meaning that's what is on your pay stub, so call back pay (at time and a half ) was only $33/hr. That is not worth the extra stress. But they go off the taxable wage/rate. Same with OT, who wants to work OT for $33/hr?
So basically, it could be good money if you can negotiate properly, but after talking to 8 agencies, they all pretty much offered the same amount, and it's not much more then you could make in a metro area with experience. Plus benefits are terrible with traveling, no PTO, awful health insurance, no matching, and if you call in sick, usually you owe your agency money. So if you're thinking about traveling, the money days are over... That's what many travel nurses I met told me. You have to do it for the love of travel. You will make enough to live, but you won't make much more then you probably do now, unless you're in a southern state or low-paying state. Many travelers are from Arkansas, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, South Carolina.

This post is right on the money- pun intended.

mursemattox · Nov 23, 2015

I am looking to travel as an acute dialysis nurse as well. I have shopped around quite a bit and have not seen a blended/gross hourly rate above $40/hour. Is this about right? That is barely higher than my hourly rate now, and benefits are free and housing cheap. Based on a 40 hour work week, that's only about $1000/week after taxes (based on my personal tax situation). Housing, benefits, etc would still have to come out of that. I realize this is not factoring in overtime or differentials, but I think it best to be conservative when estimating earnings. How much do you usually spend on housing? How are your take-home earnings so much higher than my estimate?