jhayroe

Difficult to say because nursing salaries vary completely by where you are based in the country. I know as a travel nurse, nurses in the Southeast make very low salaries (unfortunately) while nurses in California make some of the highest salaries. This current job is a salary job, versus hourly wage that I am used to. We also get quarterly bonuses based off the sales team (which really don't have much control over). Not to brag, but starting salary before bonuses is 75K. I keep close track of my hours, and since this is a salary job and sometimes my assignments get cancelled at the last minute, I am working generally less than 40 hours a week, so being salary has worked out in my favor. We also get 3 weeks paid vacation with this company, and they pay for us to go to a conference. Again, a really nice perk.

Good luck to you! It was also my dream to start in NICU nursing, which I was very lucky to get the opportunity to get a coveted NICU residency slot when I graduated. I think your answer was a good start: Experience with rapid change in patient status. Another really important piece I am sure you experienced was working with families during a very difficult time. Family centered care is a HUGE component of NICU nursing, and I am sure using that buzz word will help ensure a favorable interview for you. Look up a little article about family centered care for your interview. What it is incorporating the family in making decision for the patient and having them help provide care for the infant, for example they can take temperatures, reposition the patient, change diapers and do kangaroo care holding. Again, good luck I hope you achieve your dream!

One year later and here is my follow up: I finally did secure a job in the medical device industry. Here was my experience: I applied to about 50 different jobs utilizing job search engines: Indeed, LinkedIn, Glassdoor, exc. One job I was particularly interested was as a Clinical Educator at a fairly large medical device company. This position requires 90% nationwide travel and is strictly medical device training, and no sales. For this job, I go to hospitals that have purchased usually IV catheters or pumps from our company and I conduct classes for groups of 1-20 nurses over the course of 3-4 days during 10-12 hr shifts. We have a product "go-live" and we circulate throughout the hospital to help troubleshoot with nursing staff. There are 24 people who work at my company full time, but there is a fair amount of turnover because it is a lot of traveling, which can definitely be tiring. I applied for this job on March 2015. I didn't hear anything for about 2 months. I then randomly got a call in May about the position. I then scheduled an interview that I flew out for in June. I interviewed with 5 people in the course of 4 hours then flew home. The interview went very well and I started the job July 6, 2015. So all in all, this process took 4 months from application to start date, and it required luck and a lot of applications, since I didn't know anyone on the business. It is not easy to get your foot in the door! Just about every hospital I visit, nurses ask me how did we get this job. Like any job, there are pros and cons and some things to consider. The pros: It really is pretty easy, with a fair amount of down time. You will typically get an hour lunch break or more, and the company pays for your food while you are away from home ($75/day!) My company offers a lot of perks, for example, being able to keep all my airline miles and access to an airline lounge. Cons: My job does require working evenings and rare all night shifts (I've done a total of 3 in 9 months), and fairly frequent weekends Traveling all the time is very exhausting and draining on your social and family life. I definitely would not recommend to anyone with small children. I don't even have pets. You need to be comfortable talking in front of people, you constantly give presentations to groups of 20. This job is repetative! I repeat the same 15 or 1hr long schpiel about 20 times a day! Then come back and do the same thing every day. I also have to help the same issues over and over again with products. Nurses hate change and love to complain!! They take all their frustration about their hospital changing out on us. So if you wanted to change careers because you are tired of hearing patient's complain, you may want to consider other options. There are companies that have educator positions that are part time - if the travel is too much for you - for example, Novasyte. However, I submitted a few applications to Novasyte and from what I have heard, they are so inundated, like me, you will probably never hear back from them. I recommend you apply to companies that you already use the products for and really like. Networking and "knowing" someone is probably the easiest way to get your foot in the door. And once its in, you have a lot more doors open for you.

I would like to become a clinical field specialist for a medical device or product. I would also consider being a medical device salesperson. What is the best way to get started? I have over four years experience as a NICU nurse. I have not yet had any luck getting a medical device sales or clinical field specialist job due to my lack of experience in sales. I would appreciate any and all advice on transition from being a bedside nurse to becoming a product rep or educator. I love to travel. Thanks!

Hi I'm a 25 year old single RN in Hawaii. I work in NICU at Kapiolani. I love it here and will probably be out here for the next 8 months. But I would love to have some friends to go to the beach with! Let me know if you get a job out here!

I was happy with Parallon. Just keep in mind Parallon can only staff HCA hospitals. So if you want to work in Texas where they have a lot of HCA hospitals this will be great. This is the best way to go if you want to work at HCA because you will get the highest pay.

I recommend checking out the traveltax.com This guy was a travel RT/accountant and can do your taxes, answer questions and there are also helpful worksheets for figuring out deductions. I am not good at accounting so this was an easier solution for me.

There are hundreds of agencies out there. I would just would NOT recommend TaleMed. A company which no one is heard of, but was very highly rated by Highway hypodermics. That was why I applied with them. But I had to haggle with them to get my paychecks correct and my housing was awful and they did next to nothing to remedy it. Having a close relationship with a recruiter is important to me, but unfortunately I did not have that at all with TaleMed. I ended up working with Parallon since they have many facilities in Texas and I was happy with them.

I am from AZ and had 2 years experience before starting my career as a traveler in Texas. I agree with the post by nusretaminator and think it is accurate description of what you might find in Texas. I did 1.5 contracts in Dallas and then a contract in Austin. My first position was at the Medical Center of Arlington (in Dallas, night shift). I had originally wanted to get a day shift position in Austin (where my friend worked), but I wasn't able to get that because I didn't have any travel experience. So I took the first job I could get which was the Dallas night shift. It's sometimes tricky to get your first travel job, so you may not get your first pick, but after you complete one 3 month contract you will have more options and learn a lot about traveling. I enjoyed working in Texas. I personally preferred Dallas to Austin, but I am certainly in the minority with that opinion. Austin is becoming widely popular. It's definitely smaller and thus easier to find your way around, but believe me there is no shortage of things to do! I liked it, but I was alittle put off by all the hype associated with the city. But please don't let my opinion deter you because most people there love it. I recommend living close to downtown where all the action is. I leaved for cheap in the suburbs, but I think I would have enjoyed the city more if I paid to live in the action. As a traveler in Texas , my pay was $28-30/hr with housing stipend. (The Austin RN's did grumble at low pay around $25/hr... and the cost of living isn't that low in Austin...) You will need at least 1 year experience as an RN before working as a traveler though. But Texas is rapidly growing and you may find more positions hiring new grads than wherever you are from. I was lucky to get a new grad position in AZ, but some people from my class had to go to Texas to get new grad jobs. Once you have experience the doors really open up for you! P.S. Try the Frito Pie!

I am from AZ and had 2 years experience before starting my career as a traveler in Texas. I agree with this post and think it is accurate description of what you might find in Texas. I did 1.5 contracts in Dallas and then a contract in Austin. I enjoyed it. I personally preferred Dallas to Austin, but I am certainly in the minority with that opinion. Austin is becoming widely popular. It's definitely smaller and thus easier to find your way around, but believe me there is no shortage of things to do! I liked it, but I was alittle put off by all the hype associated with the city. But please don't let my opinion deter you because most people there love it. I recommend living close to downtown where all the action is. I leaved for cheap in the suburbs, but I think I would have enjoyed the city more if I paid to live in the action. As a traveler in Texas , my pay was $28-30/hr with housing stipend. (The Austin RN's did grumble at low pay around $25/hr... and the cost of living isn't that low in Austin...) You will need at least 1 year experience as an RN before working as a traveler though. But Texas is rapidly growing and you may find more positions hiring new grads than wherever you are from. I was lucky to get a new grad position in AZ, but some people from my class had to go to Texas to get new grad jobs. Once you have experience the doors really open up for you! P.S. Try the Frito Pie!

I am a traveler through Parallon contracted at St. David's North, but I work in the NICU, so my advice may not fully apply to you. I really like working for Parallon and I think my pay is good as is my recruiter. However, I do not like working at the St. David's North hospital. There are a few other St. Davids, main, round rock and south. I also had to "float" to the st. David's main hospital which is in downtown Austin, but I personally liked much better. At the North location, the majority of pt's are wealthy and insured, but also demanding. I think that translates to the staff who seem to have a snobby attitude and that they are better than everywhere else (however, having been to 3 other hospitals, I don't think they are any better than any other hospital). And granted, it may just be my unit. At the main downtown location, I found the staff to be much more welcoming and everyone seemed to be happier and laid backwith their job and honestly the physical layout and set up of the rooms was much better (again, I have no idea what adult ICU's are like) but at main, a much higher percentage of pts are medicade/spanish speaking only, which is a population I have much more experience working with. The big thing that is bad about HCA is Meditech, which everyone universally hates.

TaleMed is terrible. I did my first ever travel assignment through them and would not go with them ever again. My housing was an extended stay hotel that was disgusting, and no one did much to find me better housing, my recruiter did not give me very much personal attention (for example, he never checked to make sure that I arrived in Texas, if I found the hospital or how it was going) which was very important to me considering I was a first time traveler. Not only that but I had to haggle with the company on more than a few occasions to get paid bonuses I was promised and to be reimbursed for titer testing. I am with Parallon now, and have been very happy with them, but they only can contract you to HCA hospitals.

I am a travel nurse. I don't have experience as an agency/per-diem local nurse. My understanding is that you are considered a "travel nurse" if your tax residence is more than 50 miles away from the hospital. Because you will live far away, usually you will sign a 13week contract. Travelers get special tax breaks for having to "travel to work" which is the main difference between being local agency/per diem. Also as a traveler, you are generally going to work as a full time employee and have to work everyother weekend like staff members and you will set a schedule. An agency/per-diem worker can usually pick out which shifts they want to work depending on the hospital's need. You won't be guaranteed the hours like a traveler would, but I think they both make pretty good money, about $45/hr depending on the area. However the travel nurse won't get that much on a paycheck. Rather, it will be more like $30/hour with a generous tax free housing stipend. There are also seasonal jobs, or agency contracts that are set up very similar to travel jobs, the only difference is that your tax residence is within 50 miles of the hospital. Also, agency nurses/per diem travelers usually get the same amount of orientation times (which varies from hospital to hospital) and can range between 4 hours-2days at most. Some hospitals are nicer to temp help than others. You are expected to be very independent and strong nurse when you walk in, who just needs to learn the charting and where supplies are.

I'm a travel nurse looking to go to Chicago for the summer. Most recruiters have told me that it is very rare for there to be open travel nursing jobs in downtown Chicago. Does anyone have any advice for getting a Chicago travel job? I am also considering working for a local agency and would love some info about that as well. My specialty is NICU and I have 3 years experience and 8 months travel experience (3 contracts). Any good or bad agencies? Is there a current need for NICU?

I'm a traveler, and yes, the pay breakdown is confusing, especially at first. I have another question. I had one company that wanted to pay me $30/hour, but divided it up between $15/hour pay, then $15/stipend, then paid housing was separate (I had a place to live, but never saw the money for it). So basically, half of my earnings were "tax free". But another recruiter told me this was a bad practice and that this would send up red flags to the IRS. I now get paid $30/hour which is all taxed and a separate tax free housing stipend (and find my own housing). Does anyone have insight about if the "tax free" hourly pay is legit?