Travel Nursing

[ramonmalino]

I'm looking for opinions from other nurses about travel nursing. Last spring I went to the NSNA annual convention and ended up speaking to Cross Country TravCorps, a travel agency for travelling nurses. I have a ton of questions about it.

I wanted to know:

Is travel nursing a good career move or should I pick a hospital and

stay there?

Do I need to take boards in every state I want to travel to?

If I go to HI or the Virgin Islands, how does my stuff get there

What is the pay rate like?

Do I get benefits?

What are the different companies that assign you to hospitals like?

I have more, but I think this is a good start.

[fizz2Nurse]

First there are lots of travel nurse sites - sites like this one that offer discussion soley on travel nursing. Here you will also find info just by reading.

There are plenty of very good agencies too. It is necessary to read a lot and figure out what you want, whether it's best location or best pay or best place or are you just looking for different experiences?

One definite benefit of travel is staying out of hospital politics. The stupid requirements that staff has to put up with doing committee work and inside politics.

That said, as a traveler are you prepared for some staff to totally dislike you and can you adapt to change fast.

I'm for agency nursing, but don't go into it blind. The wrong agency is just as apt to take advantage of you as any facility.

[suzanne4, RN]

NCLEX-RN exam is a national exam, there actually is no such thing as individual state boards anymore. Not since the NCLEX has been available. You do not take an exam again, but you do need to hold a license in each state that you wish to work. If you have legal residence in a compact state, then you can use the Compact License if it covers the state that you wish to go to. You can find out about Compact Licenses by doing a search on them.. Not going to go into that here.

If you travel to Hawaii or any other place, you can take what you can normally place in your suitcases on the plane with you if you go that route. Anything else that you want, you will have to pay for it to be shipped.

Everything else depends on the company that you sign with. How much actual experience do you have working in US hospitals? Most agencies want minimum of one year, but the facilities that are doing the hiring want at least two years of experience.

Have moved this thread to the Travel Forum that we have, suggest that you do some reading here. Best of luck to you.

[Diary/Dairy, RN]

Check out the thread entitled helpful hints for the nurse traveler at the top of the Travel forum. I posted a lot of information there about the travel experience.