How To Juggle Your Work And Home Obligations When You Are A Travel Nurse

Anyone that is successful in their professional life knows how difficult it can be to juggle work and home. If you have a family, it can be an all-encompassing experience, albeit an extremely enjoyable one. The same is true of your work. Countless numbers of people completely lose themselves in their work every day. If you genuinely love what you do, it’s fine to spend all of your time at work, provided that you do it as a result of your own choosing. However, there is one important caveat. 

If you choose to have a family, it’s imperative that you learn to effectively balance your professional life and your life at home. It simply isn’t fair to you or your family for you to spend all of your waking hours at work and have virtually nothing left for your loved ones at the end of the day. Obviously, it can be hard to find a way to do this, especially the way the world is today. When you are a travel nurse, those challenges become even more difficult to manage.

The Life Of A Travel Nurse

Anyone that’s worked as a travel nurse knows that it’s a life that isn’t for everyone. Depending on the particular contract in question, you may be working close enough to home that you can travel back to your house after each shift in order to spend time with your family. Some others require you to travel extensive distances, even to other states. This can easily put a strain on the family and in some cases, it means that your family may not see you for weeks or even months at a time. Why do most people do this? It usually comes down to a matter of finances. Working as a travel nurse can pay very well and that means you might be able to give your family everything that they need and many of the things that they want. However, it can come at a very steep price if you’re not careful.

Balancing Work and Family

The truth is, every person has to learn to find a way to balance work and family. This is not something that’s exclusive to nursing. Instead, it’s a challenge that faces virtually every individual. That challenge gets even more complicated as basic needs become more and more expensive with each passing day. Unfortunately, most paychecks don’t increase at the same rate. This often leaves a lot of families working extra hours to cover the difference and in some cases, it means working more than one job. Obviously, this can make it difficult to effectively balance your home life and your professional life. The hard truth is that unless you make it a priority to do so, you can lose yourself in your work before you even realize what’s happened.

Making Family a Priority

So, how do you make your family a priority when you’re a travel nurse? The first order of business is to do your homework and make sure that you choose one of the best travel nurse companies available as your professional partner. You want a company that has been around for a while and has a stellar reputation. In short, you want to choose a company that understands the importance of balancing work and home and understands that it is a priority to you. As such, you might be able to find contracts that fit into your schedule better. You may even be able to request contracts that are closer to home. If you’re working a contract that far away, you might be able to take the whole family with you while living in another area for a short time, depending on everyone else’s availability.

Is It Really Possible to Make It All Work?

As previously mentioned, it’s possible to work as a travel nurse and make time for your family. That’s true, even for the individuals that want to use their job to travel to different parts of the country. Many families utilize things such as homeschooling and flexible scheduling in spouse’s jobs in order to make it work. It really comes down to a family effort. In order to successfully balance everything, every member of the family must be willing to work together. Sometimes, it’s necessary to make sacrifices but it can be done if your ultimate goal is to spend time together as opposed to allowing each other to drift apart.

Balancing Both Worlds From a Practical Standpoint

As previously mentioned, effectively balancing both work and home may require the entire family to live a non traditional lifestyle. If you’re worried about homeschooling your kids or allowing them to do school online, you probably shouldn’t worry quite so much. Many kids do this quite successfully. In fact, the majority of them typically find that they like this lifestyle better than attending traditional classes. If your spouse is working in a job where he or she can work from home or work remotely, it may be possible for the whole family to travel all over the country and experience life in different areas, all thanks to your job. Even if that’s not the case, you can still work to find contracts that allow you to spend ample time with your family, provided you’re working with one of the best travel nurse companies out there. Nurses that let their recruiters know immediately that family is their number one priority often find just as many contracts as anyone else. The difference is, they’re usually happier.

If you’ve been worrying about the possibility of growing apart from your family or even losing yourself because you’re spending too many hours away from loved ones, it might be time to find a different company that understands your needs on a more personal level. Like anything else, you can make it work as a travel nurse as long as you’re willing to set your priorities and then work hard to make it a reality. Perhaps the most important thing is to remember that at the end of the day, it’s all about what you really want and the decisions you make to ensure that you’re living the life you want to live.