Disabled ASN-RN With No Experience

[ASN-RN]

I graduated with my ASN RN over a decade ago in the USA.

Then got married, moved abroad, and started a family. 

We are back stateside, but I have zero work experience as an RN.

In fact, I haven’t worked AT ALL in over a decade. 

Moreover, I have a disability. I’m worried about losing those benefits if I start working (even part time).

To give up my benefits, I want a flexible, high paying career as a nurse. Not an inflexible, low paying job. 

Working for low pay just doesn’t make sense  for our family. 

My husband is significantly older. He’s waiting out the clock on his retirement.

In 5 years our family will retire abroad on his earnings (with or without me). 

Working abroad is not an option due to multiple professional barriers and VERY low pay (Philippines).

Though, this future change in our household would finally free me to have a career. 

But I would need to start getting experience now in the USA, BEFORE we retire abroad permanently.

I’m hearing that now is a good time to get into nursing. The vaccine mandate has opened up positions and increased demand. This opportunity won’t last forever. 

I have former classmates that worked hard for a decade. Some now command $5,000/week as travel nurses. Or so they claim…

Because my family will soon be abroad again, the only career paths that make sense to me are tele-health or 3-6 month travel nursing assignments in the USA. 

Honestly, the longest I could be away from my family is probably closer to a weekly assignment. Maybe something on and off, once a month. 

Over the next 20 years, as a travel nurse, would I realistically be making anything close to the $100+/hour mark? 

I feel rather hopeless. I am guessing that’s unrealistic pay. Also, both of these careers are off the table for someone with my lack of experience.

To be honest, the idea of starting tomorrow at an LTC facility for $17-27/hour, then working my way up the ladder seems overwhelming. I admire others who can do it, but probably it is not for me.  

Maybe I’m being pessimistic? My husband was an ER nurse. He left before Covid and refuses to return—no matter what’s offered to him. Basically, he hates the healthcare industry.

He’s at high risk for Covid. So are other household members (older, morbidly obese, chronic illnesses). We are all vaccinated, but I still worry I’d be exposing them on a daily basis. 

Any thoughts?
 

 

[YouCanCallMeFrank, RN]

Hi there,

I hate to burst your bubble, but it sounds like your expectations are extremely unrealistic for someone without any experience. Pay tends to dependent strictly on experience and performance, and if you have neither, you start at the bottom just like every other new nurse. It is possible to make a great living nursing, but not without putting in the time. And those travel nurses you were referring to? They usually require a minimum of 2+ years to be even considered for the job. Unfortunately, nursing school does very little in the way of actually training nurses, and time and experience are the only ways of becoming competent in this field. No one is going to pay you a premium if you only have the very basics to offer.

Unfortunately, because it's been more than a year since you graduated, it's unlikely you will be eligible for "new grad" positions, and you don't have the experience required for most other positions. My advice would be to enroll in some refresher courses to make yourself a more attractive hire--and apply to any and all positions that don't require experience (or explicitly say "for new grads"). Being licensed for a decade without obtaining experience will be a red flag for any hiring manager, so be prepared to offer an explanation for your lack of work.

Good luck!

[kbrn2002, ADN, RN]

The reality is as an inexperienced nurse you are not going to command anywhere near the salary requirements you have. I won't say it's going to be impossible landing a travel job that could potentially pay that with your lack of any kind of nursing experience but it's certainly not very likely.  Especially with a degree that you haven't used in a decade. Is your nursing license current? Are any required CEU's to maintain that license current? Depending on what state you are in it's entirely possible you won't even be able to work as a nurse without at least a refresher course if you haven't met the requirements to keep your license current and active. 

 

Even if you were somehow able to land an agency job I've never heard of one that offers a weekly assignment. The only option I could even think of there would be to only take contracts that are local to you so you could potentially work as a travel nurse but still stay at home. An acquaintance of mine has done exactly that, working as a traveler only in Seattle where he lives so he commands the high travel pay while not actually travelling at all. He's been doing this for about 15 years now so it's working for him.

 

But honestly your whole post is a little confusing to me. It seems you only want to work a job that pays an unrealistic amount of money just because you expect you will lose disability benefits if you start working?  Unless your disability benefits are unusually large you don't need to make that kind of money to offset them.  

 

Then it seems the only reason you want to work at all is to get some much needed experience before you eventually move overseas. I fail to see how that translates into needing a job that pays $100.00/hr in 20 years if you won't even be in the USA after about 5 years.  Especially since you indicate there are  professional barriers that could prevent you from being able to work abroad there at all plus even if you were able to work there  the wages would be low.