Take an impressive nursing shortage, add a raging virus, and you’re left with a continued need for travel nurses.
Travelers–as they’re called in the industry–travel around the country working short stints in hospitals to fill high-demand nursing positions. Nursing positions in greatest demand right now include ICUs, surgery, ED, and labor and deliver.
Travel nurses are in high demand right now and–as long as COVID-19 remains a factor–it doesn’t look like that demand will wane anytime soon. So many news headlines have described travel nurses swooping in to save the day in exchange for exceptionally high compensation.
Even though staff nurses are often thankful for the help of travel nurses, they sometimes feel resentful when working along side travel nurses who earn upwards of $5000+ each week.
Before you let yourself fall into the abyss of coveting the compensation and freedom of travelers, here are a few things to think about.
- Travel nurses must prove themselves with every new assignment. Staff nurses have nothing to prove to travelers. This odd, often unspoken, dynamic rustles beneath the first several days of a new assignment for many travelers. Staff nurses may not be able to put a finger on the mental adjustments that need to happen for everyone to be comfortable working together, but travelers know they must hit the ground running with each and every new assignment and expect no less of themselves. They know it’s your turf and they know they’re there to help. They have no intention of being a burden.
- Travelers must be okay with not being part of the organization. They have no opportunities to lead programs or initiatives or influence workplace decisions. Staff nurses have a chance to impact their units on a regular basis by becoming key contributors to unit protocols and processes thereby influencing direct patient care and evidence-based practices.
- Travelers have a different idea about what professional advancement looks like. To them, professional advancement is focused on personalizing and perfecting their own skills. They get to actively choose a travel assignment that suits their goals. For staff nurses, professional advancement may include organizational moves upward toward more powerful leadership roles or growth in the form of education, sometimes funded by their organizations (a perk of full time status).
- Travelers are under high stress on the job too because not only do they have to learn the procedures and protocols of a new organization, but also have the regular stressors of the in-demand, intense nursing jobs (like ICU, ED, surgery) and have to prove themselves to everyone around them. The stressors of staff nurses may not include new procedures and protocols or proving themselves over and over, but rather focus on the high acuity nursing tasks and critical thinking necessary to do their jobs while bringing travelers up-to-date on their units and keeping patients safe.
Issues that travelers and staff nurses share include:
- Concerns for personal and family safety, especially in this time of COVID-19, impact everyone. Fear and vulnerability remain paramount for every nurse whether traveling or not.
- COVID-19 has taught all of us that strategies around self-care, including mental health support, must be prioritized and ongoing. In order to foil burnout and derail professional collapse, nurses must be the first to step up and self care!
- As a profession, the nurses’ sense of duty and dedication to patient care and safety has not wained but has heightened during this pandemic. Regardless of nursing shortages or raging viruses, we still put our patients first.
As the urgent need for qualified travelers–and their alluring compensation–moves staff nurses out of hospitals and into traveling themselves, the nursing profession is shifting. Be prepared for change, because COVID-19 has certainly changed what it is to work as a nurse in the US healthcare system.
It means you’ll work with travel nurses and that may be the norm for some time.
It means you’ll need to be more cognizant of your own needs when working longer shifts.
It means your concerns about the changes you see in the nursing profession, and in healthcare in general, are valid and should be explored with your colleagues.
Together, we’ve all had to learn how to care for COVID patients and survive in COVID units.
And together, we can continue to move nursing forward as the greatest profession on earth!
