Cruise Ship Nursing???

[adrianrn]

Does anyone have any experience with this? I would imagine the pay is lousy, and your room is a windowless closet, but it might be fun. Just wondered if you have to agree to commit for like a year or what, and do you ever even get to get off the ship? I would imagine you'd be on call 24 hours. My friend saw it posted on Carnival and told me I might want to check into it. I am single and plan to travel nurse later this year.

[morte, LPN, LVN]

asked one once, the crew in general is a year commitment, but not the nurses....it was too hard to attract them....i think the least was 3 months, so basically like a travel assignment....and yes you do get to disembark occassionally,lol

[moonrose2u]

i considered it too..but i heard it was three months...not not too pleasant....you were on duty all the time..granted, not much happened (this was the day before Norovirus) but you still were responsible...

on a personal note, on one cruise with my family, my daughter passed out in the buffet line (low BP..can we say too much partying and not enough eating?) and the nurse was called....she came and took her pulse....I, of course, knew what to do for my daughter, but the nurse was clueless!!! I told her I would take care of the problem, but she only took her pulse!!! can you imagine???

[Djuna]

My brother was the Chief Accountant on the Carnival Cruise Lines. When I did a two week holiday with him I met one of the RNs.

They do shift work like regular RNs, they are not on-call 24 hours a day. Cruises are 3-5 days in length and they get off the ship at any port they want to depending on whether they are on duty or not.

The pay is around $2500US per month tax free, depending on qualifications. You must have at least 2 years experience in Critical Care, Intensive Care or Emergency Nursing.

The cruise I went on stopped at Cozumel, Mexico, Jamaica, Grand Cayman Islands and Key West. The staff my brother was friends with including his RN friend, all got off at each port, went swimming, rock climbing, drank Coronas and shopped.

It's certainly a fun way to travel.

[AirforceRN, RN]

I have a friend in emerg that has done this a number of times. She books the leave in advance and just does one cruise and then back to work. I guess they are desperate enough to hire for this short period, but you'll have to look in to it. She has had a BLAST and always raves about it when she gets back. After the first cruise family can come to (cheaply) and it gets even better.

Damien