Nursing Student needs help...

Silverdragon102, BSN · May 17, 2008

Moved to the travel forum

bagladyrn, RN · May 18, 2008

I know these questions have been covered here before but since you need this for an assignment I'll try to give you some input:

Travel nursing generally pays as well as, or somewhat better than staff nursing in terms of the hourly rate. Overall it may not be any better compensated as travelers usually do not get benefits such as sick leave or vacation pay and usually do not get shift differential for nights or weekends.

The positives I see are the chance to travel to new places or to spend time in areas where various friends and relatives live, not having to deal with the "politics" of a unit or hospital, not having to deal with committees and inservices, etc. and the ability to "brush off" unpleasant situations or coworkers because you know that you will only have to deal with them for a short time. I also find it expands my knowlege of techniques and methods of patient care to see how it is done in different facilities. I've also made friends all over the country.

The disadvantages: the uncertainty of obtaining your next assignment in a timely manner, unpaid downtime between assignments, staff with a negative attitude toward travelers resulting in heavy/unfair patient assignments, feeling like an "outsider" in some of the facilities, seldom being able to crosstrain or train in new procedures and more complicated skills as facilities do not want to invest the training time in a temporary person. There can also be the personal disadvantage (outside of work) of a limited social life as you need to go through the routine of meeting new people every 13 weeks.

Hope some of these thoughts are of help to you!