RN Travel Nursing As A Career Choice

Susan wakes up at 4:30, 6 days a week, and jogs 5 miles before starting her shift. That's been her morning routine for the past 10 weeks since starting her latest assignment at the medical center in Richmond, and she's a little sad, but also excited, because in two weeks she'll be leaving Virginia and heading to her next assignment in San Francisco; a city she's always wanted to visit. Such is the life of someone who has chosen RN Travel Nursing as their career path.

After graduating an RN, Susan decided to work with a Travel Nursing agency rather than seek permanent employment in one of the hospitals or medical facilities in her home city of Cincinnati. "It's not that I was trying to get away from Ohio, I love where I'm from and miss my friends and family every day, but I saw being a traveling nurse as a great adventure where I could help people plus get to discover and explore all these beautiful new places."

And Susan does plan to return to Cincinnati eventually, "I don't think I could do this forever, I don't think it's a position you would really want to retire from, though I might change my mind on that down the road, who knows. But right now I see it as exciting, personally and professionally rewarding, and I think it's made me a better nurse because with each new assignment I'm forced to learn new things and methods. Some people probably wouldn't enjoy that sort of constant change, but I feel like it keeps me even more focused on being the best nurse I can be to help my patients and fellow care givers that I'm working with."

And many others feel the same way. As of 2009 there were well over 300 agencies providing traveling nurses with assignments around the U.S., with an estimated more than 25,000 RN's on active assignments.

A response to a global shortage of qualified nurses and other health care providers, the Travel Nursing industry has become very big business that has been able to weather the economic crisis of 2008 - 2009 better than many other industries have. Despite cut-backs by medical facilities that did cause a modest reduction in available assignments over the past 2 years, there haven't been the same levels of wide-spread loss of opportunities that many other industries experienced, and already 2010 is looking to become a boom year for Travel Nursing agencies.

That isn't surprising when you consider that the U.S. Government is predicting a nationwide shortage of nearly a million nurses within the next 10 years.

One agency recruiter, Jacob Bell, explains it as, "[W]e're an aging nation. The Baby boomers are entering their golden years when the human condition naturally begins to break down and individuals require more medical care. In recent decades, as medicine became more of a bottom line business, facilities reduced their staffing levels which created a reduction in people entering the various medical fields. All of this is coming together now in the form of a fast growing need for care givers at a time when most regions simply don't have enough qualified people to fill those positions."

Of course, there may be some other reasons for the growth in the demand for traveling, sometimes called temporary, nursing assignments being offered at hospitals around the country. Though they typically pay a premium rate for traveling nurses to the agency providers, hospitals and other medical facilities that utilize traveling nurses are often able to save money by not having to provide for insurance, retirement or other benefits of the on-assignment nurses working for them. They also often have the ability to refuse or remove any individual traveling nurse from an assignment without cause or warning.

Still, when asked whether any of that bothered her, Susan said, "Not at all. I've heard stories about personality conflicts and office politics turning a few assignments into nightmares for some people doing this, but I've never seen it myself. And honestly, based on my experience if you're friendly and willing to do what's needed and in the best interest of the patients you're caring for, as I would expect anyone who goes into nursing to be, then I don't see any reason to worry over how fragile some individual assignment might be for you. The bottom line is if something like that ever did happen where I was asked to leave an assignment early, I would feel bad about it sure, but I'd also know that there was another assignment waiting for me to jump into right away." - Such is the life of someone who has chosen RN Travel Nursing as their career path.