9 Reasons to Become a Travel Nurse in 2019
Do you want to be a travel nurse? Looking to try a travel nurse job? Or have you tentatively thought about a travel nursing career, but aren’t quite sure? Maybe you’re too busy living life at the moment?
Successful travel nursing positions can take time to find. That means it’s time to start thinking about the year ahead. What will your career goals be for 2019? How can an Elite Specialty Staffing Advocate help you in that job search?
Right now, travel nurse assignments across the country are opening up for the first few part of 2019. If you’re contemplating becoming a travel nurse, now’s the time to take the leap. Why choose travel nursing? There are plenty of reasons to be a travel nurse, here are nine to get you started!
Competitive Pay
Personal happiness is the number one reason for doing anything career-wise, but money usually comes in as a close second! A career as a travel nurse thankfully offers high paying wages.
For travel nurse who would rather stay close to home, The hourly rates on travel contracts are better than being a staff nurse and most jobs offer shift differentials, overtime, and holiday pay too. This is in addition to a benefits package and other perks, such as housing stipends, referral bonuses (when you refer friends), completion bonuses, sign-on bonuses and so forth.
To be a travel nurse is, frankly, quite lucrative. You just have to find the right travel nurse staffing agency to help you fill travel RN jobs that pay the best and offer the best perks.
Open the Door to Endless Opportunities
While registered nurses are always in demand, there are locations that have more nursing shortages than others, just like locations that offer better pay than others. When you choose a career as a travel nurse, you open the door to assignments all across the country. There’s no longer the need to wait for “the perfect opening”.
You will have access to plenty of perfect openings all across the country! As a registered nurse, you never need to be out of work again when you choose to be a travel nurse.
Gain Experience
If you are looking to gain experience in a new nursing specialty, or improve existing skills, you can find the perfect job to do just that! Rather than waiting for an opening near where you’re located, you can go away, gain expertise and come back with the resumé you need to land the jobs you truly want.
And if you always dreamed of working in a hospital in the big city, or working in a rural town in the middle of nowhere, now’s the chance to do it. You can start traveling to explore the places you’ve always dreamed of seeing and get paid higher wages to do it.
One thing is for sure, no matter what assignment you choose, you will grow professionally and gain confidence, as well as experience.
Get Rid of Rental and Mortgage Payments
Paying rent, or a mortgage, is never fun and a travel nursing career can help with paying them for you. Most travel nursing companies pay a stipend for housing, or provide housing as part of the contract. That means you can give up your current rental, or rent out your home.
This perk alone incites many nurses to choose travel nursing for a year, or two, to help them fulfill their patient care goals and enjoy their time away.
Discover New Places
For those who suffer from wanderlust, travel nursing is an excellent option. Not only do you get to see as many new places as you like — you get paid doing so. Working in a city also allows you to get to know it in an entirely different way than when just stopping by. If you’re considering finding a new place to settle down, it’s a great way to take the pulse.
Thanks to digital nomads and more people moving cities, organizations like meetup.com and InterNations.com have popped up and will allow you to attend events where you can meet new people from all over the world. So you don’t have to fear being lonely either.
Nurses working when traveling may seem counterintuitive, as you’ll have less time off. In the thirteen weeks you normally spend on a travel nursing assignment, you will have plenty of days off to explore all the museums and hot spots you would in a one-week touristy visit. Chances are you will find a lot more places locals enjoy this way as well. You’ll make many more friends amongst locals than the average tourist.
Avoid Workplace Drama
One of the travel nursing benefits has nothing to do with better pay, or free healthcare. No, it’s simply the ability to avoid workplace drama.
Sooner or later in all clinical settings, we encounter co-workers, managers or team members that we just don’t jive with. Being a travel nurse does not exclude you from these encounters. It does however give you more options to work through these scenarios.
The difference? You don’t need to get involved in hospital politics as you’re a short term resource. And should you happen to come across a real humdinger, you can at least relax knowing you don’t have to deal with them for long! When you have a permanent placement as a staff nurse, this is very different as you’re stuck with the same people and are more likely to get involved.
What’s more, when you choose to be a travel nurse you always have the support of the staffing agency that arranged your placement. Great travel nursing agencies will have dedicated advocates to help you work through any of the scenario’s you encounter. This, sadly, is something that’s often lacking when you work directly for a trauma center or facility.
Flexibility and Freedom
As pay is better when you choose to be a travel nurse, you can afford to take time off in-between assignments. If you want to go home and visit your family, or fly to Honolulu for a week, that’s suddenly possible, because you’re not tied down to a mere two weeks of vacation per year.
Avoid Burnout
As mentioned above, you can afford to take time off. You also have the ability to leave an assignment after a few weeks, so if you don’t like something, you’re not stuck working until you break. When you choose to be a travel nurse you simply have the option to change jobs, or take time off, more often.
Discover New Hobbies, Make New Friends and See Yourself in a New Light
We all need a change of scenery sometimes. By going to new places, we don’t only get a change of scenery, we also tend to try new things, find new hobbies and discover ourselves in new ways. What’s more, we meet people and make new friends who enable us to see the world in a new light.
It might sound corny, but we believe it makes us more informed and empathetic nurses. Traveling really does change your life and that’s why many registered nurses choose to be travel nurses.