A traveling nurse is a registered nurse who contracts for short term nursing assignments in locations that are usually far from home. The assignments are typically 90 days to one year, but arrangements can vary and shorter term assignments are also occasionally available. Usually traveling nurses will contract through a placement agency for jobs, allowing the agency to negotiate the contract, housing arrangements and other perks. Nurses are treated well by their agencies, offered incentives for placements and referrals as agencies try to build and retain their rosters.
The nation’s chronic nursing shortage has grown to a long-term problem with no end in sight. The U.S. Government expects the nursing shortage to hit 800,000 within fifteen years. Because it is a permanent problem and because staffing shortages in hospitals has become a highly publicized issue, the traveling nurse has become a sought-after professional.
The travel-nurse industry suffered with the economy in recent years as staff nurses sought overtime and hospitals balked at travel-nurse costs. Today is on the rebound. Thousands of jobs are open; demand for travel nurses at the largest placement agency in the country went up fifty percent in just six months last year. Another agency said recently that its orders are at 30-month highs. Recruitment is so competitive that one company, Access Nurses, launched a travel-nurse reality show, "13 Weeks," at www.nursetv.com.
Traveling Nurses: Paid Well and Pampered
Nursing salaries vary by experience, location and specialty, but generally run $22 to $35 an hour. That means a nurse working 40-hour weeks 50 weeks a year would make $44,000 to $70,000. A travel nurse may push $100,000 a year, with overtime, according to an industry source. Most staffing companies also offer medical, 401(k) benefits and pay travel, housing and food costs. In addition, some of the more aggressive agencies float bonus payments to attract new personnel and to encourage acceptance of placements.
Traveling Nurses: an Expensive Necessity
In addition to the cost of the employee, the hospital or institution also must pay the placement agency for its efforts. Typically, this is a percentage of the traveling nurse’s salary. Hospitals say they have mixed feelings about the travel-nurse industry. The nurses provide continuity for weeks at a time compared with per-diem nurses. Yet travel nurses typically cost hospitals 20 percent more than a nurse employee, even when benefits are factored in, according to a nursing chief for a company that operates eighteen California hospitals.
Regardless of the cost, traveling nurses are the only option for hospitals that run into staffing shortages in situations where staffing ratios increasingly are mandated by state statute. Though they constitute only about one percent of the nurses working today, the traveling nurse is in many ways holding one of the most enviable jobs in the industry.
Not all assignments are straightforward full time assignments. One traveling nurse from Mississippi described an arrangement where he works seven days at a hospital to which he must travel and then is off for seven days. His wife is a nurse who works in their home town. He says he makes almost twice as much as a local nurse would and works half the time. Because of those off weeks, he is able to retain a normal family life.
