4 Reasons You Should Consider Becoming a Travel Nurse

Travel nurses are nurses who take short to medium length assignments away from their official home. They are quite common though they are invisible to patients because they wear the same scrubs. Here are four reasons you should consider becoming a travel nurse.

Earn While You Travel

One of the benefits of becoming a travel nurse is the ability to earn a living as you travel. Work on a cruise ship and enjoy the amenities when you finish your shift. Become a nurse at a camp or resort and you can enjoy everything the tourists do in your off hours, and probably for free.

Whether you want to work in a hospital near a posh ski resort in the winter or work in a Hawaii hospital during the summer, your ability to find lodging with other nurses or an apartment on their travel allowance makes it possible to live and work for days or weeks in these locations – and they’ll likely pay your travel, too. The odds they will pay for your travel go up if you have a nurse practitioner doctorate degree, as those who go through a doctor of nurse practitioner programs are usually more prepared to deal with the realities of a traveling nurse than MSNs or FNPs.

Testing the Waters

If you are considering relocating to an area, working in travel healthcare jobs on assignment lets you test the waters in places that you haven’t been to before. You can take different assignments around a metro area and work at various facilities in a region while you figure out where you want to stay. If you do decide to stay, finding similar work is a snap since you now have a local referral. In addition, some travel nurse agencies pay for you to earn your license in the state where you want to work, so if you choose to stay, it is now legal for you to do so.

Support an Itinerant Spouse

There is an old joke that rockers and oil field workers should marry nurses because she’ll be able to get a job no matter where they are living and support the family when his gigs have run dry. Learn how to become a nurse and you can become a traveling nurse, filling in for high hourly rates as you travel with an oil rig worker, seasonal farm laborer, construction worker, or artistic type. The housing allowance most travel nurse positions provide is enough for two and perhaps for a whole family.

A Flexible Schedule

Travel nursing allows you to choose when you take assignments. Become a travel nurse during the school year and then take the summer off to spend with your grandchildren. Work as a travel nurse for the few months your spouse is working on a foreign assignment, scheduled to return home when he does. If you’re burned out on the traditional work schedule, work one month at the high pay rate travel nurses receive and then take a month off. Note that travel contracts range from one month to a full year.

Travel nurses have amazingly flexible schedules and the job allows them to work wherever they or their family is staying.