Are you a person who is impelled by the untrodden paths in life? Do you like to change your surroundings every so often to keep your life fresh and exciting?
Getting a job as a traveling nurse may be exactly what you were looking for.
Although, you need a couple of years experience as a nurse under your belt before you can consider traveling, this may be a great opportunity to see the country, meet new people, and earn a higher paycheck.
Here are some things to keep in mind when considering this as a career:
POSITIVES
· Seeing the country: Excellent opportunity to see the country and experience all it has to offer. You have the luxury of having your job follow you.
· More compensation: Most travel nurse positions earn more than a permanent nurse. A few factors that increase your paycheck are tax breaks, contract completion bonuses, and loyalty and referral bonuses. Weekly pay is offered by most companies as well.
· No “Politics”: Typically an assignment as a traveler will last about 13 weeks. So not only is there not enough time to get sucked into the negative dynamics that can take place amongst a hospital staff, if you don’t like it you can just move on to the next one.
After seeing the positives, you might think how could there be anything better than that? For some these are great but there are those who don’t like certain aspects of traveling.
NEGATIVES
· Traveling light: With most assignments lasting the standard 13 weeks, you must be able to get up and go very quickly. The constant packing and unpacking may wear down on some.
· Hit the ground running: Hospitals expect the traveling nurse to get acquainted with the job right away and will not invest a lot of time adjusting the nurse to their changed surroundings. Therefore, the position itself may be extremely stressful for the first couple of days or weeks.
· Promotions: Traveling nurses tend to do more of the hands on nursing, making it difficult to advance in their positions.
If you think you might want to consider being a traveling nurse and have any specific questions about it there are plenty of forums, such as allnurses.com, that you could look at or submit an inquiry.
Have you considered this career option? What other things do you think are important to consider? Let me know in the comments.
By Melissa Kennedy- Melissa is a 9 year blog veteran and a freelance writer for HealthcareJobsiteBlog. Along with helping others find the job of their dreams, she enjoys computer geekery, raising a teenager, supporting her local library, writing about herself in the third person and working on her next novel.
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