You have heard of being a travel nurse… but where do you even begin? How does it work? What do you do for housing? There’s a ton of information and it can certainly be overwhelming! Let’s start with some of the basics.
Where do you start as a travel nurse?
Experience
First thing’s first: you need experience.
Let me explain why…
You need to have at LEAST 1.5 -2 years, preferably 2-3 years of experience in your particular setting/specialty for a variety of reasons.
Patient Safety
First and foremost… patient safety. This boils down to: listen, you only get 2-3 days of orientation and then you are expected to fly on your own after that. No new grads or RNs with any less than BARE minimum of 1 year experience need apply. I don’t care who you are, you won’t be ready to fly on your own after 2-3 shifts without first having experience. It’s hard enough for a seasoned nurse to grapple with a 2-3 day orientation much less an inexperienced nurse.
You are meant to learn and grow as a new nurse and for patient safety as well as your nursing license you better be sure you get some experience. You can learn all you want from books in nursing school, but nothing beats on the job training and physically being with patients.
Nursing Licensure
Nursing licensure is a huge factor as well. You worked hard for that degree and this world tends to get crazier and crazier. Make sure you respect that license and the fact that it can be in jeopardy if something goes awry. It can happen to you, to me, to anyone in the medical field. Don’t let the notion for travel nursing outweigh the need for the basic foundation of your nursing skills. With that being said, once you get your experience, travel nursing is one of the best teachers! You get to see how different hospitals or facilities do things across the country.
I personally began my travel nursing career with 1.5 years of experience ( a little on the lower side for required experience) as an ER nurse. But to back up my experience as a nurse, I also had about 2 years as a tech in the ER. So I was used to the pace, the rhythm, the protocols, the handling of patients and reading patients even before I became a nurse and knew about medicine. That, by the way made me leaps and bounds ahead of most of my nursing school classmates and highly recommend it!
How do you get a job as a travel nurse?
Where a travel nurse job starts..
To understand about travel nursing, you have to start from the beginning. So let me break it down for you simply. Travel nurse jobs originate with a hospital or facility with a need for staff just like any other job you would normally apply for. However, the needs are usually on a much more urgent basis, i.e. they can’t afford to train someone for 6-8 weeks or even longer for a new grad. Travel nursing is essentially just a band-aid fix for staffing shortage. They need someone to staff the unit ASAP until they can eventually hire the staff they need. Now the interesting part is finding the reason for the need.
Lack of staff
It could be due to just a genuine lack of staff for a number of reasons. The first place I worked actually it was because several of their permanent staff were all on maternity leave at the same time. As you could imagine, that would be an ideal situation to use travelers until all your permanent staff was able to come back to the unit. I’ve also worked in a unit just where it happened to be that some left for other jobs, some retired, some went back to school, etc.
Management/administration turnover
However, other reasons they are that short staffed may not be that benign. Hospital administration and management turnover seems to be a recurrent theme. While this may not necessarily be a bad thing, something definitely to be on the lookout for. When new administration comes in, change comes and they tend to want to clean house from top to bottom. 😳 So some staff may have gotten their walking papers, and then some people just don’t do well with change and refuse to adapt and they leave.
My recommendation is to certainly ask about this during your interview and see whether this is something you can work with. But don’t just make your decision solely on this answer because there are a lot of factors that go into whether or not this facility is right and a good fit for you. You must also do your research including researching the facility and nurse experience as well as if it is monetarily advantageous. 95% of my jobs have been great regardless of the fact of management turnover, staff shortage, etc.
Where things can go south is when you feel your nursing license is in jeopardy because of the lack of staff. More on that later.
So that’s where the job starts…now how the jobs get to you!
How the travel nurse job gets to you
So we have explored the originations of the travel nurse job, now how do the jobs get to you?
This is where travel nurse companies come in, also known as our very own “middle man”. By the time the job goes out to travel nurse companies, these jobs may have already gone through the regular channels to get staff and now the need is getting pretty urgent.
It is similar to local staffing companies that may supply all sorts of temporary positions. However, the difference here is that people are being supplied from all over the country and thus having to travel to get to these jobs. So they need to be compensated for their time, travel, housing, and meals.
The travel companies get the job listing and offer them to you, the travel nurse. Once you accept a job, the travel nurse company gets a cut of the hospital pay package and you take the rest. It’s a lot more complicated than that but for simplicity’s sake, we will leave it there for now.
Side note…Some people have tried to cut the middle man as you could say to try to take higher pay, but that can be pretty tricky too. I would recommend going with travel companies, at least until you learn more about how it all works.
There are loads of travel nurse companies, some better than others. Check out BluePipes latest recommendations for the best of 2019! We can dive deeper into the things to look for in a company and recruiter later.
How does housing work as a travel nurse?
Ok, you get the basics of how travel nurse jobs work, but where do you live once you get a job?
You have two options: have the company (not all do this!) provide housing or find your own housing using a travel nurse housing stipend. I’ll break down the two options here.
Company provided housing
So I actually might recommend this as a newbie travel nurse. There is SO much to learn as a newbie, this can just take a huge load off for your first time traveling! Granted when I started traveling there weren’t as many housing resources there were now, but still I think it’s a great first time scenario.
Like I mentioned though, not all companies do this. Some of the smaller companies may not offer this or even some big companies due to lack of partnership with housing agencies or the staff to handle it. Check out your company’s website to see if this is something they offer.
Company Provided Housing
Pros
- You don’t have to search endlessly for the right housing
- You save time and energy
- Less stress
- It’s private housing!
- If something is wrong with the housing you hand it back to the housing department to deal with
Cons
- You lose extra money from stipend pay. If your housing costs less than your housing stipend (which you will probably never know) you aren’t credited the difference. On the flip side if your housing is more expensive, you don’t pay anymore: bonus for you!
- You don’t really get a hand in the decisions where you will stay the next 3 months
Conclusion:
Good option for newbies, save the hassle for down the road when you figure out all your options!
Finding your own housing
This is by and large what most travel nurses do. This is also one of the most stressful if not THE most stressful parts of the travel nurse job.
So as part of the pay package as a travel nurse you are allotted a meals and incidental stipend (some are termed differently, but essentially the same thing) and then of course a housing stipend.
The housing stipend is supposed to be based on fair market value for housing around the area you will be staying in. BluePipes blog really has some great insight into the housing stipend. Now fair market value doesn’t mean a bomb a$* private house with a pool and all the amenities you want. It SHOULD afford you decent, basic housing but if you want more bang for your buck, the best bet is renting a room from someone.
There are really great resources out now for temporary housing though! I’ll dedicate a whole post to housing down the road, but for now let’s see the pros and cons.
Your own housing
Pros
- With patience, diligence, and time you can find some pretty sweet stays
- You can pocket extra housing money. For example, your housing stipend is $1200/month and you get a place for $800/month. Boom! That’s an extra $400/month you pocket tax free!
- You make the decision of where you will stay for the next 3 months!
Cons
- Holy time consuming! Searching and searching for a place within your budget, minimal commute, and an acceptable roommate
- Did I mention this is usually done within 2-3 week timeframe? Stressful!
- If the housing is not suitable its on you to fix it
Conclusion:
Definitely the way to go if you are thrifty and savvy in looking for places online! My two cents..remember, yes this is home away from home… but how much time will you really spend here? For me, not much! I’m always on the go and exploring the surrounding areas. Bottom line you want it to be safe and clean, but extras are good for splurges every once in awhile! I did spend all my housing stipend once in FL, but I had a pool and was right on the beach…treat yo self every so often!
***Insider pro tip***
One of the hands down best advice I have seen should you decide to get your own housing:
Book a place (ideally an extended stay or something of the like) for one week at the start of your contract
This is a great idea for a number of reasons. You are only locked into a place for 1 week, if you like it, stay! If not, you are physically in the area to go look around at other places. Because let’s be real. Who has looked at pictures of hotels or places to stay and the photos look amazing online only to get to the place and see the photos are far from reality. Or that roommate that sounded so cool is borderline schizophrenic. That’s a chance we take unfortunately. So this a great tip to help avoid some heartache!
How does a travel nurse get paid?
Ok, ok. Let’s discuss one of the most important things of travel nursing: MONEY!
This is meant to be just a basic break down of how you are paid as a travel nurse, it can be a little more in depth but we’ll keep it simple stupid 😂😂
I touched briefly before on the fact that as travel nurses we travel across the country to go to these jobs (by regulations you have to be at least 50 miles away from your permanent home aka tax home…more on that another time) and thus are duplicating expenses and must be compensated as such. You have to find housing aside from your normally maintained permanent home as well as day to day expenses including food expenses.
Pay Package
So generally the pay package is broken down in its most basic form as follows:
Taxable Hourly Wage(Base Pay) x hours worked
+ Meals/Incidentals stipend (non-taxed)
+ Housing stipend (non-taxed)
=Total Pay
Travel nurse companies either pay weekly or bi-weekly and may have it broken down into GROSS (total without taxes) or NET (“take home”) pay. I personally like a quote given to me in NET pay, just a little less math for my brain lol.
Sounds simple enough…but as a newbie it can be quite confusing.
In order to get the most bang for your buck you want two things:
1. Low taxable hourly wage.
This may seem counterintuitive, but this is what you are getting taxed on. The higher your pay, the higher your taxes. The lower your pay, the lower your taxes. Golden. 👍
The caveat here is that you don’t want it TOO low. That affects your overtime rate (should you be allowed to overtime, it will be chump change honestly maybe even the same rate you were getting paid a staff nurse at home). Generally speaking at the time of this writing, you want it somewhere around $19-$22.
2. High non taxable wages (Meals and Housing Stipends)
This is where you make your money. This is straight up cash, no taxes! Sometimes there is a little play room with the pay packages; if you are quoted a high taxable wage see if they can lower that and add money to the non taxable sector. Not always the case, but if you feel like your taxable wage is too high it certainly can’t hurt to ask.
Confused yet? Don’t worry you’ll get the hang of it!
Extras
So, not all companies have all of these or in fact ANY of these. So can’t stress enough, do your research in regards to the companies you work with and see what extras/benefits they have. I won’t go into ALL the things you want to look for with a company, but just want to mention some of the things you may want to look into as “extras” in form of potential compensation and reimbursements.
This is not a comprehensive list by any means, but some of what I have seen so far. And trust me, sometimes you have to ASK about this stuff, it may not be readily offered by your recruiter.
- Travel reimbursement — Some companies offer you relocation expenses in the form of gas reimbursement or pay you per certain mileage. Definitely a nice perk!
- Orientation/onboarding pay – Who wants to take 3,452 online tests for free? Not me! Ok, it’s not that many but it sure as hell feels like it. Some places make you do them beforehand, some at actual orientation, or both! No rhyme or reason behind it that I see other than just a real test of your sanity so you might as well get paid for it!
- Certification/licensure reimbursement — You aren’t part of permanent hospital staff anymore so you have to get your own BLS/ACLS/PALS/TNCC and what other gobbity gook they want you to get. Some companies pay for this! A lot of companies will pay for your licensure in other states as well as renewal of your home states.
- Sign on bonus/completion bonus/extension bonus/referral bonus –Refer a friend to your company. Extend your contract. $$ Get them dollaz! $$
Well, I’m sure I have overwhelmed you enough for one reading, so I’ll leave it here. I hope this information was helpful to all you new and aspiring travel nurses as well as current travel nurse!
