Why Travel Nursing

This month marks the one year anniversary of my nursing director in a small town hospital calling a staff meeting to inform us that the CEO demanded budget cuts in our staffing.

As a result, he cut the “weekend option staff”, of which I was one, resulting in a thirty percent cut in pay.

Later that day I remember him asking who would be the first people to leave. “Me!” I responded, and within just a few months so did over ninety percent of the day shift; including that same director.

This was the catalyst for the change in my nursing career but it certainly wasn’t the reason. I had already made up my mind to be a travel nurse but had intended to wait another year before my departure.

So what are the reasons that a nurse might take up travel? I am sure you can find lists pasted all over the internet, but I am going to attempt answering this question of why to take up travel nursing by describing who a travel nurse might be.

You have an opportunity radar.

My last day at that small hospital cutting the weekend position was the day before the cut in pay was implemented. I refused to accept the gloomy circumstances presented by the nursing director and hospital CEO.

Instead I believed that if opportunity was removed at that small town it must be available somewhere else. I left that hospital to work an agency position in a town no further away from my home that paid considerably more money.

I then accelerated my time frame to begin travel nursing. Since then, I understand that the second nearby hospital I worked at implemented staffing cuts as well.

A travel nurse can sense opportunity and is willing to make adjustments to seize them.

You have broken your attachment to the material life

I have heard of nurses lured by the pay of travel nursing to take positions in order to “catch up on bills”, only to discover they remain in the same rut.

Yesterday, Mary and I were shopping at a wholesale club store stocking up our pantry when we came across a laptop computer nicer than ours just purchased this spring, and for half the price. We stood there several moments evaluating the benefits of each of us having a computer rather than sharing. Not to mention it was such a good buy!

The laptop remained at the store, because here is the bottom line; what you buy has to be carried with you or left behind. Filling your closets and stuffing every purchase somewhere isn’t an option.

If you are a person who has detached from that “I gotta have it” mentality then you would make a candidate for travel nursing.

You believe that life is to be lived now.

It will be difficult to make it out your door to the first assignment if you don’t have this mentality. Delayed gratification, and plans to travel someday will keep you home, but if you have that sense of urgency, travel nursing could be for you.

Many people questioned me regarding retirement plans if I travel but my reply was that I will stay put and rest in retirement when I am tired of travel.

The need to travel gets in your blood and the desire to see what’s on the other side drives us. We are not looking for greener grass, but rather a new view of the sunrise.

Travel nursing puts you in the “now moment”. It doesn’t matter what kind of charting you did at your last assignment, you chart like the current hospital wants you to. Perhaps driving your car might be the best transportation in one city, riding the subway in another.

Except as an oddity, locals are not interested in what you did at another location, what matters is that you can adapt to what is going on now.

You are not a control freak.

I am a creature of habit, and living and working out of my routine element has been my largest stressor.

People who feel the need to control on the micro level would definitely have problems with travel nursing.

Sure there are things on a larger macro level that can be controlled while traveling, but there are just too many variables on the smaller scale. Simple things that I once took for granted just don’t always apply while traveling.

Many people admire the freedom of the travel lifestyle but with it come the unseen cost of not always being in control.

This is an element that recruiters won’t tell you about, nor will you see it on travel company brochures. There are two sides to the freedom to travel coin and I strongly suggest considering the cost side as well.

These four considerations didn’t really appear on my decision list when I thought of travel nursing yet now that I have been out there I strongly suggest putting them on yours.

Here’s to hoping they help.