What Education Is Needed To Be A Traveling Registered Nurse

Travel Nurse

Travel nursing is a relatively new but booming employment option within the healthcare industry. Travel nurses work brusque assignments at hospitals and other healthcare facilities to fill high-demand positions where at that place is a shortage of qualified healthcare professionals.

An private becomes a travel nurse by finding employment with an agency or organization that specializes in placing traveling nurses in jobs around the land. These jobs may be permanent positions lasting 1 or more than years, or they may be temporary positions, lasting anywhere from a few weeks to a calendar month or more.

What Is a Travel Nurse?

Travel Nurses are registered nurses who are employed in short-term roles by independent nursing staffing agencies, instead of a by a single hospital. They typically work on a contract ground for a specified period before transitioning to some other assignment. Their assignments may be in a variety of clinical settings, including hospitals, clinics, skilled nursing facilities, or independent living locations.

Travel nurses may be sent to piece of work at facilities throughout the United States, also as in other countries throughout the world. Because of the short-term nature of travel nurse assignments, those pursuing this career path must be able to acclimate quickly to new piece of work environments and new people. They must too be willing to relocate to a new area as dictated by their assignment.

Important Facts About Travel Nursing

The standard travel nurse assignment is thirteen weeks, only contracts between eight and 26 weeks are very common.
38% of travel nurses say they practice the job for the hazard.
The Affordable Care Human activity is credited with a twenty-twelvemonth high in demand for travel nurses.
Travel nursing jobs grew by 44% year over twelvemonth from 2018 to 2019.
The top iv growing specialties within travel nursing experienced a 60% rate of increment and all belong to critical care nursing positions.

Travel Nurse Requirements

Travel nursing is an appealing option for many people considering of perks like competitive pay, career flexibility, and the opportunity to travel and explore new places. If you are set up to become a travel nurse, hither are some of the requirements you should know about before you begin exploring job opportunities.

License Requirements
Certification Requirements
Years of Experience

License Requirements

The most basic requirement to become a travel nurse is a current and unencumbered RN license. Nurses who have completed an Associate's or Bachelor's degree in nursing are eligible. Some travel nurse agencies may prefer to hire BSN-prepared registered nurses, but a BSN degree is non a formal requirement. If you accept a specific facility or assignment in mind, you should check the official job requirements before signing with a staffing agency.

Certification Requirements

Along with a nursing license in practiced standing, yous volition need certifications in Advanced Cardiovascular Life Support (ACLS) and Bones Life Support (BLS) to be hired past a travel nurse agency. These basic certifications are necessary for travel nurses to perform routine healthcare tasks and procedures.

Additionally, if you programme to pursue assignments in a specialized care unit, information technology is recommended that y'all concur credentials in that specialty. For example, nurses pursuing roles in critical care should hold CCRN certification and nurses who work in labor and commitment should agree Neonatal Resuscitation certification.

Years of Experience

In general, nurses should take at least one year, but often two years of infirmary-based, bedside experience as a registered nurse earlier they employ with a nursing staffing bureau. Nurses who will be working in a specialized unit should accept experience commensurate with that specialty. For example, a Critical Intendance Nurse must have several years of experience working with critically sick patients before they are eligible to work in an ICU.

Growing Demand for Travel Nurses

Hospitals take long relied on traveling nurses to see temporary needs for boosted staffing. Travel nurses have provided safe treat millions of patients across the country for years by seamlessly integrating themselves into the workforce of hospitals, often filling in for sick or absent-minded nurses. Yet, had it not been for the advent of the COVID-nineteen pandemic, past far the worst of its kind in years, it would be unlikely that traveling nurses would enjoy the public recognition they exercise today.

COVID-19 coverage catapulted travel nurses into the public heart and now travel nursing has the potential to be i of the most important parts of the healthcare workforce. Since travel nurses have demonstrated their importance and so capably, hospital executives are already taking action to entice them to their facilities. Sign-on bonuses, completion bonuses, and increased pay are just a few of the incentives offered to entice travel nurses to work at hospitals that now recognize travel nursing as vital to patient care.

Impact of the Affordable Care Act

The Affordable Care Act is credited with significantly increasing the need for travel nurse positions. After millions of people gained healthcare coverage via the ACA, the need for healthcare professionals at hospitals, clinics, and other facilities striking a twenty-year high. In addition, the ACA's Medicaid expansion immune hospitals to offer more generous pay packages to attract and retain more qualified candidates.

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Benefits of Travel Nursing

Excellent pay, career advancement, and new adventures are simply a few of the benefits of travel nursing. As a traveling nurse, you have the opportunity to experience the world, earn groovy money, and take on new challenges. Read on to discover additional benefits of working in this industry.

Explore New Places
Liberty and Flexibility
New Challenges
Earn Not bad Money

Explore New Places

Travel nursing gives you a take a chance to explore a diversity of environments and new cities. Whether yous want to travel across the United States or take a quick trip overseas, travel nursing offers you a take a chance to encounter new places and come across new people. You can experience different cultures and gain a unique perspective on life, something few professions tin offer.

Liberty and Flexibility

Travel nursing provides nurses with unbeatable flexibility and greater control over their careers. Travel nurses tin cull when and where they want to work, a a benefit that does not exist for permanent nurses. A travel nurse can also take as many days between assignments as they want, which means they tin take time off when they desire to. This flexibility provides nurses with more than fourth dimension to explore their hobbies, take care of themselves, stay salubrious, and savor other interests.

New Challenges

Travel nursing allows nurses to accept new challenges and responsibilities that permanent nurses may non be able to accept on. Working at different facilities, from large hospitals to small, rural offices to urban facilities, traveling nurses have the opportunity to learn unlike skills and gain feel in different areas. Additionally, travel nursing allows you to showcase your adaptability, which can benefit you when you use for full-time positions afterward on.

Earn Great Coin

Traveling nurses are well compensated, with hourly pay rates that are typically higher than those of permanent staff. In addition to competitive hourly wages, nurses on travel assignments typically receive housing stipends or free furnished housing, sign-on bonuses, and health insurance starting on the beginning day of their assignment. They may also receive perks similar catered meals and airfare reimbursements, which are but a few examples of how lucrative travel nursing can be.

Top Travel Nurse Jobs

Over the past decade, the travel nursing manufacture has experienced amazing growth as employers are condign increasingly reliant on travel nurses to fill skilled nursing positions. From labor and delivery to the ER and PICU, top travel nurse agencies are seeing aggressive recruiting beyond many nursing specialties. Here, we will listing several of the peak specialties for travel nurses with the highest need and the highest pay.

Labor & Delivery
Telemetry
ICU Nursing
Perioperative / Operating Room
Neonatal Nursing
Emergency Room Nurse

Labor & Delivery

Labor and delivery nurses provide comfort and coaching to women before, during, and later their babies' birth. Care includes providing epidurals and other forms of pain relief, instructing the patient during delivery, timing contractions, and cleaning, and evaluating the babe immediately after his or her birth. Labor and delivery nurses tend to the new female parent for the rest of her hospital stay, while a neonatal nurse cares for the baby.

Telemetry

A telemetry nurse connects machines to patients that monitor their heart charge per unit, breathing rate, claret pressure, heart rhythm, and blood-to-oxygen level. The computer automatically transmits data from these machines to a nursing station or remote location where a health care professional can closely monitor the patient. Another member of the nursing staff uses this data to develop an ongoing treatment plan for the patient.

ICU Nursing

Patients in intensive intendance require complex, specialized intendance in cardiac care, pediatrics, and neonatal nursing. The demand for experienced ICU nurses is e'er high because these patients need the most care. Because of the focus on preventive wellness care and patient wellness, hospitals try to continue patients at habitation unless they are extremely ill. Those who end up in the ICU oftentimes require nurses who are experienced in providing extremely complex intendance.

Perioperative / Operating Room

The travel nurse who works in the operating room assists surgeons during various procedures and cares for patients before and later on their surgery. He or she must pay special attention to proper sterilization of surgical instruments as well every bit to disinfection. Some of the other duties of a surgical nurse include preparing the room for surgery, getting the patient's anesthesia ready, and prepping the patient for the surgical procedure.

Neonatal Nursing

Neonatal nurses work with newborn babies during their beginning 28 days of life and sometimes longer. Babies born good for you require simply basic intendance from neonatal nurses, such as feeding, bathing, monitoring vital statistics, and diaper changes. Those born prematurely, with a congenital disability, or affliction need a neonatal nurse's services to assist them recover and receive the best possible offset in life. The newborn intensive care unit of measurement, or NICU, provides the highest level of care for newborns.

Emergency Room Nurse

The emergency room nurse treats patients who report to the hospital for immediate intendance. Some walk in, while others are brought past ambulance. Accidents, sudden symptoms of affliction, set on, and heart attack are some of the common reasons patients seek treatment from their local emergency room. Emergency room nurses help triage patients and provide direct patient care. Some situations are not equally difficult, but the patient was forced to seek emergency care because they had no other treatment options at the time of the injury or illness.

What Are Travel Nurse Agencies Looking For?

Travel nurse agencies typically begin their recruitment of RNs by looking for a good balance of experience and instruction. They want nurses who have feel working in a multifariousness of settings and prefer candidates who possess strong communication and interpersonal skills. Simply put, they want to brand sure the nurses they rent are responsible and reliable workers.

Additionally, agencies and employers expect for personal attributes that will enable the nurses they hire to succeed. They desire employees who are pleasant, honest, and trustworthy. They besides want nurses who tin hands suit to new work environments and people, equally well equally the ability to integrate into a new team. Below, we listing several important traits of successful travel nurses:

Flexibility
A Positive Attitude
Competence
Maturity

Flexibility

When a nurse receives a new assignment, they have very little time to acclimatize to a new setting, new people, and new protocols. To exist successful, travel nurses must suit quickly to a new environment and forge effective relationships with hospital staff. Travel nurses are expected to be well-situated in their new environment within one to two weeks.

A Positive Attitude

An important quality of successful travel nurses is the ability to maintain a positive attitude. Travel nurse agencies oftentimes screen new applicants to ensure they possess an upbeat, cooperative personality and piece of work well with their co-workers and managers. They desire workers who accept their assignments with a potent sense of optimism and free energy.

Competence

Some other key quality of successful travel nurses is the ability to be competent in their duties. They must be able to perform all procedures that are assigned to them efficiently, quickly, with minimal supervision. Additionally, they must have the ability to acclimatize rapidly to new workflows and protocols.

Maturity

Travel nurses should have a mature, professional person, and respectful attitude when accepting an assignment. Travel nurse agencies prefer candidates who accept a loftier level of emotional coping skills and tin can interact with patients and co-workers in a manner that is advisable to the situation.

Travel Nurse Salary

The average salary for a travel nurse in 2021 is over $99,000 per year, which is the equivalent of $48.00 per hr. This average is virtually $25,000 college than those reported just a few years ago, in 2018. Wages for travel nurses take increased significantly in the by two years as a direct result of nursing shortages and the COVID-19 pandemic, which has acquired tremendous demand for travel nurses, particularly in areas of the country that have been most severely impacted by the virus.

Competitive Employment Packages

In addition to increased hourly wages, travel nurses also receive competitive employment packages, which provide them with medical insurance, housing, meal allowances, stipends, and travel reimbursement. Employers are eager to attract and retain nurses due to the high demand for their services, which tin can brand the total earnings of a travel nurse even more lucrative.

Highest-Paying States for Travel Nurses

STATE	HOURLY Mean WAGE *	Almanac Mean WAGE *
New York	$56.lxxx	$118,145
New Hampshire	$55.16	$114,727
Wyoming	$fifty.63	$105,304
West Virginia	$49.35	$102,645
Massachusetts	$48.74	$101,389
* Zilch Recruiter, Travel Nurse Salary past Country, October 2021

Helpful Organizations for Travel Nurses

American Travel Wellness Nurses Association (ATHNA)
National Clan of Travel Healthcare Organizations (NATHO)
Professional person Association of Nurse Travelers
American Nurses Association

Travel Nurse FAQ

Travel nursing is ane of the well-nigh popular and fastest-growing sectors in nursing, and for good reason. Travel nurses can work all over the globe and earn a much higher bacon than those who stay home. Other common reasons for the popularity of travel nursing are the abundance of job opportunities, the flexibility to work equally much or as little equally you want, and exposure to different places and cultures.

Yeah, you can bring your spouse and/or pets with yous on a travel nursing consignment. Travel nursing agencies tin usually make recommendations and provide you with options to accommodate spouses, family unit considerations, or pets if you communicate your needs in advance of your start date.

Travel agencies typically offer medical and dental benefits and may offer retirement benefits similar a 401K and 401K matching. Over the by two years, employers who have felt the strain of nursing shortages from the COVID-19 pandemic have gone to slap-up lengths to entice travel nurses to their facilities. This has led to a significant re-thinking of the value of travel nurses and how travel agencies tin partner to offer benefits that appeal to the travel nurse.