Travel Nursing: Agency reviews and recommendations?

Silverdragon102, BSN · Mar 16, 2016

Moved to the Travel Nursing discussion forum

BabyRN0513 · Mar 18, 2016

Hi there! I've been with Supplemental Health Care for a little over a year and I've been pretty happy with them. Bob Hudson is my current recruiter and before him it was a guy named Shane who was promoted. I've had a great experience with both. I did a contract in New Jersey and in my tax home of Las Vegas. I'm shopping around also as I'm looking at positions in the San Francisco area and not all agencies have available contracts at the same hospitals.

Pros:

Nice recruiters

Pays great

Offers insurance and 401k benefits

Cons:

No PTO (not all agencies offer it)

I hope a few others respond so I can get more info too! Good luck!

DiscGolfNurse, BSN · Mar 19, 2016

Thank you so much for your response! I am curious, is it standard for most agencies to require one year experience before placing you?

NedRN · Mar 19, 2016

Agencies will place a pre-nursing student if the hospitals let them. But for some funny reason, hospitals don't want to train travel nursess and require experience. Also, travel can be competitive. If you were a manager needing a traveler for three months, would you hire a never traveled nurse with 10 months of experience, or one with 10 years of experience who has traveled for 2 years? Same cost.

Trjl · Apr 2, 2016

I have been with Cirrus Medical Staffing for a few years. I like them. I feel that they are fair, and I have not had any issues with them.

I did one job for Parallon. They hire out to mainly the HCA hospitals, that are not the best hospitals. High nu/pt ratios, etc.. They don't offer insurance, but you get a little more money in your paycheck to buy your own. I personally would not work for them again.

I almost worked for American Mobile. They are a very large company. They have an aggressive sell. I constantly get calls from them asking for me to call them back about some 'great jobs' (over several years). I have heard from other American Mobile nurses that they don't pay as well as some other companies. This company will also 'charge you' if you miss a day of work for illness. They do have a lot of jobs, and may not be an awful company to work for, I just think there are a few more out there that may be better.

Highway Hypodermics is a web site that lists companies and can tell you a bit about them, and who is higher rated. I am also an oncology nurse, and I have done travel for a few years. When I started there were barely a handful of jobs to choose from, and that number has grown over the years thankfully. I started out in in-pt oncology, but have done clinic work the last 2 years. Your first Travel job may not be the best, as many hospitals don't want a 'new' travel nurse and require 1-2 years of travel before they will even consider you. So sometimes it is the desperate hospitals that will take a newby. And honestly, I am not sure if the Travel Agencies require you to have more than a years worth of experience before they will hire you. Don't be too disapointed to hear that your first 1-2 onc jobs may not be your ideal. I hated my first 2 jobs, but I found plenty of things to do in and around my little communities and am glad I had a few months to explore outside of work.

Like many nurses, I thought about Travel for years. I got a Nu Travel magazine for a few years. Now it is on line. I also read articles and blogs about it. While Travel nursing is great, don't be fooled by the ads. If it looks too good to be true, it probably is. If you plan to stay oncology, you won't get to go anywhere you want. Nor will a company find you a job in any city you request. I basically have to watch the job boards and pick and choose where I want to try and apply. yes, your recruiter does help, and if they are good, will alert you as soon as a job becomes available in a town you are interested in. Anyway, I was going to say, before you did it, read, read, read. Call a few companies you think might interest you and interview them. Ask about how many years you need of nursing before they will hire. Ask about insurance, do they offer PTO, 401's, do you get charged for a sick day, travel money, etc... Have a list in front of you. Ask them why you should pick them as a company. Be aware if you call, they have your name and phone number and will continue to call you. I guess you can ask them not to call you back until you call them first. I actually picked Cirrus in the end because I had seen in my Travel Nurse Mag that a recruiter at Cirrus was Travel Nu Recruiter of the year. I contacted him. I actually loved him and thought he really was top notch. He has since moved on. I am not besties with my current recruiter, but I have no issues with her.

I do want to quickly mention that many people are under the illusion that as a Travel Nurse, you will make a regular nursing salary, and then on top of that, you get $1000 or more for a housing stipend. That is not how it works. My pay at my last hospital was around $16/hr but with incidentals and my housing stipend, it got me up to my regular nursing salary that I had before I even went into nursing. You still may make a few more dollars than the full time staff, but as a Med Surg 'realm' nurse, you are not making the big bucks. Of course, night shift do better. ICU and similar are the higher paying salaries. Med surg bonuses range around $500, whereas ICU may make $1000 or more in bonus pay. All depends on the hospital and location. For me it is not so much about the pay, but more the experience of traveling and being able to literally vacation while working. But each person has a motivation as to why they want to get into travel.

Best of luck to you. If you have no ties back home and are free to travel, it is a great way to get around the country and learn from some really good institutions. I love Travel and see no plans of stopping at the moment.

NedRN · Apr 2, 2016

Maxona, most agencies have missed hour penalties. Some may offer some number of hours you can miss before penalties (or makeup hours when possible), but they all have them. The reason is that the way the travel industry works is that there is an all inclusive bill rate per worked hour. If you don't work, they don't get paid. Yet you still are getting compensation based on those unworked hours in the form of housing and per diems. So you are not actually losing pay, it is all just math. Missed hour penalties are just a "claw back" of overpayments since you didn't actually work those hours. It just feels bad.

In a way, you actually receive an increase in pay per hour when you miss hours as your stipends are not taxed, but the penalties are against your taxable pay. So if you do the math and divide your net check by hours worked, you will see an increase in pay per hour.

The caveat is that missed hour penalties should be based on the agency's real costs for missed hours. Total up the stipend's value per worked hour and see if the missed hour penalties are fair. Some agencies charge extra perhaps because they feel they deserve to be paid for "lost profits". I disagree with that interpretation as they don't share the extra profits from overtime for example.

Often the contracts figure out the missed hour penalties the same regardless of actual details and you want to catch that before signing a contract. For example, if you are taking a housing stipend in lieu of provided housing and that is already prorated based on hours worked, you shouldn't have to be docked a second time for the same amount in a missed hour penalty. This is a common mistake in my experience and worth looking at if you are taking the stipend instead of provided housing.

Maevish, ASN, RN · Apr 9, 2016

Hospitals don't want to train nurses because you're there to fill a temporary need and need to be able to hit the ground with only a few days orientation. If a contract is only 13 weeks it doesn't make sense for them to take weeks to train someone not used to the clinical area the nurse was hired for. AMN was bad for one assignment, but I went to Maxim and so far so good. There have been other companies as well, but it depends greatly on the recruiter.

VeniceBeachNurse · Apr 9, 2016

Hello:

I have been interested in travel nursing for a while. I was wondering if anyone had any recent experiences with Aya Healthcare? I see they weren't getting such great reviews, but in the past year, it seems maybe there were some management changes and the reviews seem a lot better.

Any other good experiences with any other travel agencies?

Any pointers to give someone who is new to travel nursing?

I have been a nurse for 3 years, mostly Urgent Care, Inpatient and Outpatient Psych and Hospice. I live on the east coast, but have roots in Los Angeles, so one of the things that makes it easy is I have a lot of housing options available to me independently and I know my way around the city.

Any negotiating pointers? Things you hadn't thought of that you wished you asked before signing on?

Thanks in advance!!

"VBN"

NedRN · Apr 9, 2016

Why the interest in Aya? Ad, call, or other marketing? Better to find your own agency rather than have them find you. Agencies with lots of marketing often pay less.

Call lots of agencies (there are several hundred) and pick perhaps 5 recruiters you communicate well with and feel like you can trust to work with further. While I wouldn't pick Aya unless you do mesh well with the recruiter, the agency brand is way down on the list of factors important to success in travel, while your relationship with your recruiter is number one, especially for new travelers.

As far as negotiating, the information you collect from talking to lots of agencies, and the continuing working relationship with 3 to 5 recruiters will tell you what you are worth in a given market for your experience and specialty. If you work with only one agency, you have nothing to work with to negotiate anything absent a hot specialty and specific hot job. Knowledge is power, and that requires a research and resource base. Tips can be had here, especially if you narrow down your questions, but first hand knowledge is better.

Just start reading say the first hundred threads in this forum for lots of tips and information you can use in talking to agencies and working out what is best for you.

VeniceBeachNurse · Apr 12, 2016

Excellent points, NedRN. Aya offered to pay upfront for me to get the licence in California (NJ doesn't cross over to CA), but you make good points.

I went to TravelNurseSouce.com and found a lot more diffferent agencies with psych travel nursing assignments in my preferred cities. I applied for a few and got a ton of calls, so I will call them back and do some negotiating.

Thank you for the tips!!

NedRN · Apr 12, 2016

For psych, try Supplemental and Worldwide.