What are the most popular specialties in travel nursing?

NedRN · Mar 9, 2014

Travel specialties exactly match staff specialties in quantity and popularity. Not surprising, is it?

RHill9919 · Mar 9, 2014

Thanks for your comment, Ned, I think. I get that the most popular positions are the positions that most people don't want to work. Are there any in between? Are you an OR nurse?

NedRN · Mar 9, 2014

Thanks for your comment, Ned, I think. I get that the most popular positions are the positions that most people don't want to work. Are there any in between?

I don't understand that at all. Are you saying that people force themselves to work the positions no one wants to work such as med surg, thus making it the most popular? That makes no sense.

Perhaps you mean a different word than popular. I can't speak to people's attitudes about how much they like their specific jobs and took popular to mean nursing specialty distribution: how many med surg nurses there are by percentage et cetera.

If you are talking about pay, in general (and this works similarly in every profession), the higher trained you are, the more you get paid. Thus a telemetry nurse gets paid more than med surg, and an ICU nurse gets paid more than a telemetry nurse and so on.

By their nature, higher trained positions have fewer nurses, thus scarcity also increases pay and this gets carried over to travel and is often magnified as travelers are less than 30,000 out of total nurses of 2.8 million.

You have a long way to go, first to get an education, then experience, before considering travel as a lifestyle. You may have a family by that time or have other life requirements that might rule out travel. You don't know your aptitude or abilities yet. I would not rule out any specialty based on what someone said, it would be far more important to your general happiness to pick one you like. That might be psych! There are lots of psych travelers. What is a hot specialty right now for travel may be quite different 6 years from now when you are possibly ready to travel.