Travel Nursing Career Advice

[lexidann]

So I'm graduating from XU in one year with a BSN. My boyfriend is living in Germany and we've already done long distance for one year (I lived in Germany before starting school). His plan is to eventually come back to the states, but he needs another year before he can do that. He wants me to work in Europe or Germany for a year once I graduate.

Do you have any advise? I could apply for English-speaking jobs in Europe but the conditions there are not as good as they are in the states for nurses. Also, I read that if you are a travel nurse then you can take months off in between contracts and maybe I can use those months to spend time in Germany. However, I am unsure how hard it is for a new nurse to get travel jobs, or if it will look bad finding jobs if I'm only doing part of the year contracts.

Has anyone worked as a travel nurse in Europe or Germany? Or has anyone traveled for extended periods of time in between nursing contracts?

[NedRN]

Time off between contracts is a non-issue. You are only obligated to work for the term of your contract, which can be anything but standard is 13 weeks.

You will not be competent to practice independently after graduation, you need a significant amount orientation, and will only approach competency after two years in most specialties, excepting perhaps medsurg and LTC and perhaps preop admission. And perhaps few nurses of any competency are really prepared for hit the ground running environment in a brand new hospital with different charting, flow, census, and local and work culture. You only find out if you are suited for it by trying it, or doing per diem in a different hospital to the one you are staff in.

There are contracts overseas, but tend to be 12 or 18 months minimum. The armed forces hire civilian nurses, including in Germany, but these take a long time to get and have similar contract lengths. One possible situation closer to Germany would be per diem in London (requires UK licensure). All of these will require significant work history in a focused specialty.

I don't know much about it, but I did meet a "travel" nurse who bopped about as occupational health nurse in a corporate environment in the Caribbean. That might be possible too (with significant experience, probably ED), but such positions are not only rare, but I'd bet even rarer in Europe to have a US company have a facility in which they want an (expensive) American nurse.