miam

Staff makes much more then travelers in the bay area, but very very difficult to land perm positions.

You can't expect other nurses to spoon feed you specific information. You have to be willing to get on the phone and do your homework. And if the assignment does not work out then learn from it and move on. Travel nursing is a very individual experience. Experienced travelers can guide you and give great advise but you have to be willing to do the leg work.

If you are signed up with several agencies then you should have work. That being said I don't know if travel nursing is for those extremely "picky". How do you know you don't lime a area until you have been? And it's only 13 weeks,then you move on.its great to know where you want to be, but flexibility is the key to travel nursing.

She may have been on the rude side but she was right. We are there to fill in the needs they have and very often it may not seem fair. But not very often do we get treated like staff. A lot worse then that can happen as a traveler then getting a crap schedule. It might make for a rough 13 weeks but is def not uncommon. Its the life of a travel nurse and hopefully your next assignment will be better.

I don't think it would be wise to start traveling thinking you are going to have to make a lot of extra money to pay back loans. What if you are at an assignment and they cancel you 2 weeks into a 13 week assignment and you are out of work those 2 weeks and are responsible for the other 11 weeks of rent?? So many bad things can happen, along with good.make sure your have a couple months of savings before you start, must to cover your butt so you can enjoy your adventure.

Thanks guys. I am a little old old to have been this stupid ( can't use the young/doumb excuse) but hopefully still have the nursing career I want.

Question: I am currently a travel nurse , am with several companies, have current RN clean license. My question is I do have a felony eluding on my background from a year ago. It wasn't a high speed chase of course, but I did not pull over soon enough and they charged me with that. It is awful and I hate the fact I wasn't paying attention. Will this prevent me for applying for any further licenses or with any other agencies?

You would want to drive so that you could have a vehicle to explore with. Unless you rent a car, and that would be something you pay for, not the agency and quite expensive.

I'm lucky, I have a compact license but since you do not pick 3 or 4 states that seem to have nursing jobs that you are interested in and want to visit and appapply for license when you can afford it. It will get expensive fast.

i have done this at comfort inns, they have let check in as early as 7 a. They are pretty basic, but for 36 hrs all you really need is a clean bed, a microwave, and a fridge. It works. :)

why would you say travel nursing is not full time? Most of us ask for guaranteed 36 hour weeks in our contract, which is always considered full time.

with the travel industry still being pretty tight on jobs, and peoples experience being different, i think it would be very difficult for two nurses to try to arrange travel assignments together right now, but maybe not impossible. from my experience i would tell anyone who was worried about being by themselves or being lonenly that travel nursing is not for you because the majority of time you will be by yourself and have to be ok with it. yes, there is a goid chance that you will meet other staff nurses and other travelers, but for the most part they will have their own schedules and or friends/family that they do things with. So you will have to plan in advance to make alot of plans (shopping, siteseeing, outdoor activity) on your own, and hopefully make buddies along the way. Otherwise you will be misserable sitting inside your hotel/apartment just sitting around inbetween working your shifts.

which agency are you using that seems to have alot of oakland contracts?

you might want to dit tight at your job for at least another year, maybe try to get some ER or ICU experience. you are going to have a really hard time trying to get a travel job right now ith such limited experience. Or at the very best you are going to wind up taking one that more experienced travelers know not to take. That can wind up in a very negative experience for you.

jtmarcy12: dont hate me because i have a hard time gaining weight :). I do sympathize with people who are overweight, even though i have never completly understood it. Like i said, sometimes i get flack for being on the short side even though i cant make myself stretch, so i know its hard to be judged for anything that we feel we have a hard time controlling. As for the question of is it hard to meet people i would say as a rule yes, you def have to be the one to get out there and do things. There is always the pssibility of becoming friends with other travelers and staff nurses, and you can develop some terrific buddies, but it can also get very lonely if you expect other people to make the first move. You def have to be ok with being by yourself.

just a couple things that you may be confused about. Number one, if i choose to not take company housing i do not get reimbursed for the housing i find on my own. I can take the housing stipend that is provided and be responsible for my own housing. Hopefuly the housing that i find is less in amount then the stipend, if that is the case i come out ahead. If on the other hand the housing that i find is 500 dollars a month more then my stipend i wind up paying that out of pocket and the company in no way "reimburses " me for the extra expense. Also, you have mentioned you live in texas which means you have a compact nursing license, but i assume you know that connecticut is not a compact srate? So you will need to be be responsible for aquiring that license if that is where you are looking to work. And though someone stated that they though you would have no trouble getting an assignment there, just know ahead of time that as a new traveler you very well may have a hard time getting your first coupke assignments anywhere, untill hospitals see that you habpve the experience they are looking for. It is def not realky easy when you first start, but it does get better.

Anyway, what i am trying to say is that good or bad, i have found that there have been alot of scary nerve wracking things that always come up , but as long as you know you are healthy and know ahead of time your physical limits ( if you have them) dont let that stop you from traveling. i have been told many times that " im so tiny to be a nurse" as if nurses all have to be a certain height and weight. We dont , ( even though there are alot of times where i have to stretch to hang iv fluids:) ) but i dont think weight, or lack of it, has any importance.

I am sure you will do fine, but i am curious to why you would even be concerned? I dont think i do much different physical wise as a traveler as i did before. I am on a different spectrum from you, i only weigh around 92 pounds, have never really been able to gain weight. Im not really rhat thin, since im only a little over 5 feet, but have never found traveling and being able to get things done as a nurse matters as to where you are location wise. I am almost 50, and very healthy, but would worry about my age slowing me down more then anything else, and with that i hope i have another 15-20 years left in me :)

Your pay does sound a little low compared to what i have been making as med/surg tele , but it def makes on where you are at in the country. And i would not advise california if you think it is going to signifificantly make you more money. yes, you will make more per hour, but make sure you are realistic on how much housing, parking, payment if you have to drive across golden gate, bay bridge ( that adds up!). The best thing to do is play your agencies off each other, and whoever offers you the most money ( including per diem, housing, 0T) wins the golden ticket of you. :) Just make sure you calculate everything out that is important to you, just not the money. I have known a couple nurses who went to california, and when all was said and done they wound up making almost 0 money, and would never go back. It doesnt have to be like that if you go into it ( any assignment) with your eyes wide open..

i am with 6 agencies! and they always check with me when they get contracts for conversion projects. i would make sure i was with several agencies, you can always ask them about EMAR conversions and that you are interested. Also keep your eye open for mass emails from companies loo,ing to hire travel nurses.

By the way, the "stewardess" comment. Pretty sure this was insulting to them as well. If you think they have a cush job think again. pretty much another thankless job that if most people had to do it for two weeks they would run screaming.

To mlbluvr: After reading this thread it seems like you are less on this site to gain information as you are to antagonize us travelers by making silly assumptions. To reasearch something you should go to multiple travel nurse sites and read what us travel nurses go through instead of assuming we are getting rich, and when not working we are sitting around drinking bon bons. It is a hard occupation, and it is sometimes hard being away from home, working hard to pay bills, pay our morgage 1000 miles away, never knowing for sure if our contract might be cancelled tmrw for no reason, or know where our next job will be untill our current one is almost finished. Their is certainly good points of doing it, but no way is it because we are going to be retired by age 50 and go lie on a beach for the rest of our lives.

they are usually looking for nurses who have epic experience while their nurses get through training, and then sometimes for awhile after they go live. Otherwise it is the same as any other travel assignment and can be fun because you usually team up with quite a few other travelers. I tend to like them.

20 dollars in california? Thats nuts. No way would i talk to any agency who was offering less then mid 30s, then negotiate your overtime pay. And housing is going to cost al least 2000 ( low end), so you have to factor that in as well.

i dont think anyone was trashing you. However a question such as " best agency" or general " how is it" questions simply cannot be answered by any of us that travel. There is no way there is a best agency. Some are good, some are really bad, but the end all be all is your connection with a recruiter and finding out what they are willing to do for you. That is a individual thing that no one can help you with. its just a matter of you calling several agencies (6-10) and ask questions. Spend time ( im talking days or weeks) reading and researching travel nurse forums. I dont think its that people dont want to help but unfortunately it really is a live and learn process. Just know that right now as a new traveler you would probably get the low end of the barrel assignments and have to work your way up.