When it comes to nursing, the options are endless. There are SO many different specialties in addition to many different types of facilities to work at. There are remote jobs, 9-5 jobs, home health positions, and of course there’s travel nursing. I’m not sure if it’s always been so controversial, but it seems that since Covid travel nursing has been a hot topic. Pay skyrocketed for travel nurses during the first year or so of the pandemic, and though that’s settled down to a more reasonable level now, many people are still interested in travel nursing while others remain critical or unsold. In this post I want to talk about some of the differences between travel nursing vs staff nursing, the positives and the negatives.

pay

I go into more depth answering the questions of “do travel nurses make more money than staff nurses?” in a separate blog post – check that out here! This is often the first thing that people think about when they think of travel nursing. The simple answer is yes, travel nurses do make more money than staff nurses. There is a lot more to that conversation such as overtime and bonuses, benefits, and expenses that make it a bit more nuanced, which I talk more about in my post linked above. It’s pretty safe to say though, that you would most likely make more money working as a travel nurse than as a staff nurse.

time off

When a hospital hires a travel nurse, it’s because there’s a dire need. They are hiring these nurses to work, not to take time off. Typically, if you want time off as a travel nurse, you need to negotiate it into your contract before you sign. Once you’ve signed a started, you’re potentially a bit more limited than the typical staff nurse when it comes to switching shifts and requesting time off. It’s definitely possible, but in the end, you’re there to work and that’s the expectation. That said, travel nurses are typically hired to work 36 hours or maybe 48 hours a week, so there’s a lot of days off already worked into a schedule like that especially if you’re working 12 hour shifts.

We’ve found that we often don’t need to negotiate time off into Dan’s contracts. So far, he’s always been hired to work three 12 hour shifts per week (though he sometimes picks up a fourth shift) which gives us plenty of time to travel and explore. On top of that, if you don’t renew your travel nurse contract, there’s the chance to set your start date for the next one a few weeks after your current contract ends. We typically have two to three weeks in between contracts which gives us enough time to pack up, see family and friends back home in New Hampshire, and make it to our next city sometime with a little bit of extra travel sprinkled in.

benefits

That said, there are some limitations to how much time off you can take in between travel nurse contracts if you want to maintain your benefits like health insurance coverage. It varies from agency to agency/insurance plan to insurance plan, but it seems to consistently be around 30 days or so that a travel nurse can take off in between contracts without losing coverage. Travel nurses do have the opportunity to sign up for benefits like health, dental, life insurance, and some limited 401k/retirement plans.

The difficult part of this is making sure you have another contract lined up so you’re not risking losing coverage. Travel nurses also lose their benefits if they change agencies which is something to keep in mind. This particular topic is a good picture of one of the biggest differences between staff nursing and travel nursing: stability.

stability

Travel nursing is confusing, complicated, risk-inherent, and unstable. If you’re willing to take some risks, put in the work to figuring it out, and live a less consistent/stable lifestyle, it can be great. But that’s also pretty tough sometimes. Travel nurses are limited to being able to work in the same area for one year maximum, after that they lose the benefit of having the housing stipend be untaxed. The untaxed housing stiped is the biggest financial advantage to travel nursing so this is significant. Moving every year (or every three months like we did for our first year of travel nursing) is intense. It’s a LOT of work, takes a lot of money that we have to save up during each contract, and is quite destabilizing.

expenses

Earlier I talked about how travel nurses make more than staff nurses, but that there’s a bit more to that conversation. One of the things that adds some nuance to that conversation is expenses. Travel nurses have some big expenses inherent to the nature of the job that don’t totally cancel out the higher pay, but they do take some of that advantage away. Some of these expenses are travel and finding last minute furnished housing.

Travel nurse agencies almost always offer something in the way of travel reimbursement, but it’s typically capped somewhere around $500 (at least in our experience). It may sound like a lot, but oftentimes it barely puts a dent in how much travel costs between lodging, gas, and food on the road. I haven’t double checked it, but I think we spent close to $500 just on gas during our cross country drives to and from Phoenix. There are also other benefits that staff nursing offers when it comes to student loan, licensing/credentialing, and continuing education reimbursement that travel nursing simply does not. Or if it does, it comes out of a small budget that may or may not cover a single license renewal.

Check out some of our resources on finding housing while travel nursing here.

travel

Now, we’ve talked a lot about the somewhat more negative aspects of travel nursing. I want to switch gears to one of the top advantages to travel nursing which is a big part of what attracted us to it in the first place: the adventure. Travel nursing is a unique opportunity to travel AND save money. That combo is typically tough to come by. Obviously it’s what you make of it, you can stay in one place for nine months or move every three months. You can pick a region of the country and look for contracts there, or you can bounce from coast to coast, or even an island or two.

The United States is an incredibly diverse and beautiful country; there’s just so much to see. We have loved getting the chance to explore so many new places all within the last year! Check out some of the places we’ve been to while travel nursing, whether on contract or just a short trip:

• Myrtle Beach, SC
• Charleston, SC
• Highlands, NC
• Savannah, GA
• York/Kittery, ME
• Denver, CO
• Montreal, QC Canada
• Phoenix, AZ
• Sedona, AZ
• the Grand Canyon (AZ)
• Tucson, AZ
• San Francisco, CA

experience/resume

Travel nursing is a great thing to have on your resume as a nurse. As a travel nurse you have to be quick to learn, resourceful, flexible, hardworking, and so much more. The training for travel nurses is minimal so you’re learning on your feet and are expected to do a great job despite that added challenge. Travel nurses also work with numerous different documentation systems, equipment, patient populations, and hospital management/staff. You learn a lot as a travel nurse and that helps make your resume that much more attractive.

upwards mobility

That said, there are some limitations when it comes to experience you can gain as a travel nurse. Because the training is so brief, most of the time travel nurses must have previous experience in whatever specialty they want to work in. You are highly unlikely to get a job as a travel nurse on a unit that you don’t already have a year’s worth of experience working on minimum. You’re even more unlikely to be trained on a new-to-you unit as a travel nurse. You most likely won’t be able to do that as a travel nurse. Staff nurses have much more flexibility when it comes to changing units and being trained on units that they don’t have much (or any) previous experience working on, because the hospital can take their time training them and then expect to have them working on that unit for a while.

let me know your thoughts in the comments!