thoughts on traveling

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i don't have my RN yet (just got excepted into school! :)) and my wife and i have been thinking about travel nursing for a few years if we liked it. i know i would need to get 1-2 years of experience first, but i still have some questions.

1) is it benificial (financially) to get your own housing? we are thinking of getting an airstream or the like to live out of.

2) has any one had trouble with young children? schooling for them, home schooling, doctors and all that? what are your thoughts on that.

3) how does the OT work? would i be allowed to pick up shifts anywhere in the hospitals or only in the department i was recruted for?

4) how does the license work out between states? do i need to switch to which ever state i am working in or does the company deal with that?

thanks for your input!

mike

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i have only been traveling for a couple years, so someone with more experience may have a different response, but i would wait awhile before trying to get specific information. It sounds as though since you have not started nursing school yet you are probably looking at at least 5 years until you could consider travel? And right now most travel companies will not consider you after one year of experience, it is at the minimal 2. Without that it would be hard to get your first travel assignment because the travel assignments are really pretty competetive and you would be submitted against other nurses that have more travel experience behind them. Im willing to bet most of the things you are asking about are going to be totally different one way or the other 5 years from now.

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hmm.. so more than 2 years of experience would be better... would getting my BSN give me an edge over others? or would just being an RN be "good enough"?

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from what i am seeing alot of hospitals are requiring BSNs , and requiring their nurses already on staff to obtain them within a certain time frame. At least with magnet status hospitals. i would think it would be safer for you starting out to assume that a BSN is going to be the standard alot of hospitals are going to be looking for, so i would just go ahead and put the extra school work in now as opposed to later.

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Some interesting facts to ponder: Less than half of hospital based RNs hold a BSN or better. What hospitals value in a traveler is experience, so beyond a very few hospitals, all will prefer a very experienced nurse over a less experienced BSN. There is only about one semester difference in education between an ADN and a BSN and most managers recognize that. An ADN requires about a year and a half of college level prerequisites to get into most programs and certainly to graduate making a total of three and a half years. As someone who has been traveling for close to 20 years, I have never been asked once by a manager what kind of degree I hold.

That said, if someone is just starting out and has no college, I would always advise them to go into a BSN program. Not only is it usually easier to get in, but it is less stressful with a much lower dropout rate. The BSN is valuable to hold you options open for management or teaching. It will probably be decades before a majority of hospitals start demanding BSNs - I was told in nursing school in 1989 that it was the wave of the future, and at the time, North Dakota mandated a BSN as minimum entry to RN. They have since rescinded that stance and I am still waiting for BSN to be mandatory. It may come, who knows. Holding a BSN is of almost zero value to travelers. A specialty certification is worth more on your resume.

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Just get through nursing school first...then get to a level I trauma teaching hospital preferably to an ICU...stick with that for 5 years or so, get your CCRN and then the skies the limit after that....I second what NedRN said....BSN not necessary for travel, they care way more about experience that what degree you hold and you're gonna want all the certs you can get...Good luck :)

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Specializes in Women's Health NP.

While BSN is not really of value for traveling, it will definitely help you when you first start out - if a hospital's choice is between a new grad AD RN or a new grad BSN RN, they're going to go with the BSN just to help their stats out, especially if they're looking for magnet status. Experience is king, but you gotta be able to get in somewhere to -get- that experience first ;)

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