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Travel Nursing: The Response to Nursing Shortages |
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Travel nursing is the healthcare industry’s response to staffing temporary nursing shortages. Travel nursing staffing agencies offer an attractive career option for the nurse to be able to travel, get paid well, and add to their experience. |
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| Author: Adriano Meis |
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Travel nursing is the healthcare industry’s solution to meeting nurse staffing shortages as those needs are presented and only on a temporary basis. This means that the traveling nurse will register with a travel nursing agency when seeking employment and the agency will contract with the client hospital or other healthcare facility to provide staffing. The travel nursing agency will announce available travel nursing jobs and the nurse will express interest in a job or several jobs.
Travel nursing is not for everyone. First, the travel nurse should have about one year of experience before seeking this type of employment.1 Why? Because a hospital will require the traveling nurse to begin working on day one with little orientation as to the particular hospital’s operation. The hospital is not obligated in any way to provide for the travel nurse’s professional development as the travel nurse is not an employee of the hospital. Not having at least one year of experience would be too much for a nurse just entering the field to handle.
Secondly, the traveling nurse should have a personality type that enjoys change because the average nursing assignment only lasts a few months. In the workforce, there are basically two personality types: those who like change and those who don’t. If you are a person who needs long-term job stability then travel nursing is probably not for you. Plus, you must realize that during times of nursing shortages, there will be plenty of work but during times of few shortages you may find yourself out of work. However there are no indications of nursing shortages decreasing in the near future.
Travel nursing is also beneficial from a hospital employer’s perspective and more are using the services. There is a constant effort to keep costs down in attempt to make healthcare affordable. But patient load fluctuates and it is very difficult to determine the optimum yet cost-effective level of nurse staffing. In other words, if a hospital is overstaffed because of low patient load, then labor costs are too high. Travel nursing helps to control labor costs by allowing the hospital to only spend that money to pay staff when it is needed. 2
Travel nursing is exciting for the nurse who loves to travel. But more than that, it exposes a nurse to different professional experiences he or she might not have seen otherwise. The more places you work, the more you are going to experience and this builds the professional expertise of the nurse. Although there is a certain element of fear experienced by the traveling nurse, the reimbursement is significant making this an attractive option in nursing employment.
About Author
Adrian Meis is a writer
Article Source:
http://www.1888articles.com
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