New Canadian becoming travel nurse.. help!

[justinemercedes]

Hi everyone!

I am in the beginning stages of looking into travel nursing and finding it all so overwhelming! I am an RN with 2 years experience working in Pediatrics at a children's hospital in Canada. I work for a float pool and thus work on six different units covering most diagnoses across the board. The only areas I don't work in are ER and ICU. I am very interested in doing some travel nursing to gain more experience and explore new places. I am unsure of where exactly to start? I wrote the NCLEX in Canada but I'm not sure how long the process of getting a VISA and a license is? Can I hold my license in Canada and still obtain one within the US? Am I only able to hold a license in one state at a time? Do I do a lot of this independently or go through all of it with recruiters? These are a few of many, many questions! Any guidance and advice would be so appreciated and if there's anyone out there that has made the leap from Canada to the US that would be even more helpful!

[Silverdragon102, BSN]

Moved to the International Nursing forum

Starting point would be getting registered in the state you plan to start nursing in. Links to the state BONS can be found at the bottom of the page. Once you have registration sorted you need to sort visa screen certificate with CGFNS and all this can be done by yourself without using an agency.

Once you you have that sorted you then look for agency that does travel nursing as you will need a letter of employment as well as vsc for a TN to be issued. There are a couple of threads in the Advice on Immigration on Canadian nurses making move to the US