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Travel Nursing 101: What It Is, Who It’s For, and Why You Might Love It
So, you’re thinking about travel nursing.
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Maybe you’re dreaming about spending a summer in Alaska, a winter somewhere warm, or finally seeing parts of the country that have been sitting on your bucket list for years.
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Our family jumped into travel nursing in 2018, and it completely changed the direction of our lives. We traveled across the United States, mostly living in an RV, taking assignments from Alaska to Maine and California to Florida, with a whole lot of places in between.
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If you’re wondering whether travel nursing could be part of your story too, this is the place to start.
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What Is Travel Nursing?
At its simplest, travel nursing means taking the nursing skills you already have and bringing them to a hospital that needs temporary help.
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Hospitals use travel nurses to fill staffing shortages, cover leaves of absence, handle seasonal increases in patients, and fill other temporary needs.
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Most travel nursing assignments are hospital-based, with opportunities in specialties like ICU, ER, Med-Surg, PCU, Labor & Delivery, OR, NICU, PACU, and more.
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And one of the best parts?
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You already know how to do the job.
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If you’re an ICU nurse at home, you’re generally traveling as an ICU nurse. If you’re an ER nurse, you’re looking for ER assignments.
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New hospital. New coworkers. New supply closet.
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Same nursing skills.
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How Much Experience Do You Need?
Travel nursing generally isn’t designed for brand-new nurses.
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Hospitals hire travelers because they need someone who can get up to speed quickly, often with a much shorter orientation than you’d receive as a staff nurse.
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We recommend having at least one year of recent experience in your specialty, with two years being even better. Individual facilities may require more.
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The real question is whether you feel confident walking onto an unfamiliar unit, learning how that hospital operates, and safely doing your job without weeks of training.
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What Does Travel Nursing Actually Look Like?
A typical travel nursing assignment is around 13 weeks, although shorter and longer contracts exist.
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Many travelers work three 12-hour shifts per week, but schedules and guaranteed hours vary by assignment.
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The biggest thing to expect?
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You need to be flexible.
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You’re there because the hospital has a staffing need. You might get a great schedule, or you might be filling the holes nobody else can.
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Successful travelers tend to bring three things with them:
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Experience. Flexibility. Resilience.
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You’ll be learning new hospitals, systems, coworkers, and communities over and over again. That can be challenging, but it’s also part of what makes travel nursing such an adventure.
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Why Do You Want to Travel?
Before you start worrying about recruiters, contracts, licenses, or where you want to go, figure out your why.
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Maybe you want to explore the country.
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Maybe you have financial goals.
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Maybe you want to challenge yourself professionally.
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For us, travel nursing became a way to combine work with something our family already loved: adventure.
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We still had jobs and responsibilities, but instead of waiting all year for a vacation, we got to explore wherever we happened to be living.
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Your why might look completely different.
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And that’s exactly the point.
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Want the Full Story?
There’s a lot more to travel nursing than we can fit into one blog post.
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In the first episode of our Travel Healthcare 101 series, John digs deeper into what travel nursing actually looks like, who makes a good traveler, what contracts and schedules can look like, and why figuring out your motivation matters before you ever start looking for jobs.
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Watch Travel Healthcare 101: What, Why & Who
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And once you’ve decided this might actually be for you, there’s another big question:
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Who is going to help you make it happen?
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That’s where we’re headed next.
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Next: Assembling Your Travel Nursing Team →
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