Yes and no. Yes, originally it was to cover LOAs and also the gap to hire when someone resigns. While nurses leaving to chase a travel job does leave their incumbent short handed, the travel job they left for existed prior to them leaving.
Travel nurse pay caps
- Thread starter theiacowtipper
- Start date
This is correct. Expect hospital rates to continue to skyrocket, which also means insurance, Medicare and Medicaid increases.
It’s a great gig when the market is available. Travel while you can, explore the U.S. gain valuable experience. Find a nice place to settle down or return back home.
New grads don’t have the experience to be travelers. Most hospitals require a minimum of 1 year experience.
And the state limits the union's collective bargaining power.
Some do.
Nurses don’t get car rentals any longer. That’s been gone for approximately 10 years. Cars are more for higher end such as doctors and mid levels.
Non pandemic. Travels get a higher wage. Usually $5-$10 per hour more than they would get for perm. They get a tax free per Diem, based on the GSA limits for the area they are at. Could range from $30 per day to $100 per day. Think CA, Boston, NYC etc for the higher end. They get a tax free housing stipend as well. Finally either air fare to and from or mileage if they drive.
Well as soon as you’re eligible. It can take many years at a hospital to have enough seniority to get good shifts
Yes. If they stay with the agency. Most agencies, to be competitive, offer insurance on day 1. Some offer 401k, PTO etc.
Yeah, I don’t know how long agencies will last with the emergence of online marketplaces competing with each other for users.
1. Not enough nursing schools/programs
2. Not enough nurse educators
3. Not enough HS students being steered toward healthcare.
If you can find cheap flights, absolutely possible. Work 3 12’s, take 4 off. I know an L&D nurse in Iowa that has commuted to a travel job 90 miles. Stays 2-3 nights in a hotel, home for the other nights.
Many hospitals offer sign on bonuses now in order to keep them 1-3 years. During the pandemic, many nurses said F the bonus and chases the money.
Precisely. I heard a group of IC women talking, one of which was a nurse. One of her coworkers left the UI to be a traveling nurse, then simply came back to the UI to work as a traveling nurse at much higher wages.
My mother is a nursing professor. This is her area of expertise. They’ve sounded the alarm on this for 30+ years: The ANA, the American Academy of Nursing, The VA. They told anyone who would listen how bad the demographics were.
Nada.
Hospital systems operate at much thinner margin than most realize. All lawmakers are afraid to tackle the real issue and elephant in the room, the wages of administrators and specialist physicians. They had better go after the nurses….lol, sad actually.
All true. The alarm has been going off for years. The question is, whose job is it to fix the problem? Everyone passes the buck. IMO, the govt should step in and incentivize students entering nursing programs. Incentivize more schools and educators.
I work at a community college with nurse educators. They can hire educators and there is a waiting list to get in. Plenty of students. The issue that many nursing schools are having is there aren’t enough facilities that accept the students for clinicals.
This is also true. Hospitals also need Nurse Educators for clinicals. My clients, in recent years have indicated this is an obstacle. It might also depend on which part of the country the colleges are in. Over the last 20 years, Iowa has not been a hot market for travelers. It was, like everyone else, during the pandemic. However, when we were making sales calls, Iowa was not a state you were glad to have. Iowa produces a lot of nurses and has some excellent nursing programs.
It’s ridiculous how many people here are crying about the poor hospitals. Their information is public, look at it here https://hospitalfinances.org/search?type=facility&facility_name=&state=IA&city=&zip=
You can see many are making millions, after expenses, but sorry we don’t have money for hospital workers. What a load of crap.
You can see many are making millions, after expenses, but sorry we don’t have money for hospital workers. What a load of crap.
I wonder if anyone in the Iowa legislature spoke to people at UIHC about this since they currently have several units there almost entirely staffed by traveling nurses.
The nurses I’ve talked to agree with capping it. These are non travelers who worry hospitals can’t afford to keep hiring traveling nurses. Basically, the number of nurses opting to travel is taking from the pool of nurses who would normally stay a one employer for a while. I’m sure there is a divide amongst nurses.
Meanwhile, in South Korea doctors are walking off the job because the government is increasing slots for medical schools.
South Korea to suspend doctor licences as strike crisis escalates
Some 9,000 doctors walked off the job two weeks ago over government plans to increase medical school admissions.
If it weren’t for 1st generation Haitian and Filipino nurses, Florida and California would be in a nightmare situation.
Some have limited benefits. Mrs. Lucas gets sour at seeing female nurses get trained and build skills, then leave UIHC to chase money only to come back when they want the security of the benefits to start their family.
I talked to a pharmacists once that was hoping schools don’t expand class sizes so salaries stay high.
I will not lose any sleep over robots and AI in healthcare.
One of the problems is that you have two types of nurses now obviously.
Travellers and employed. The ones that are employed don't get the wages they ought too and the others get higher wages than they ought to. Nurses that are without families, no local obligations and don't care about all the benefits like retirement etc take the traveler jobs. They normally leave employed positions to become travelers as their freedom and the pay and lifestyle attract them. However, the nurses that have husbands, homes, lives outside of work that require them to stay local, cannot take advantage of the traveler positions so you have a lot of discontentment. They don't blame their colleague for getting what they can when they can but as others have said, when they leave FT positions for travelling this then forces the hospitals to hire for that position. If they cannot, then they have to go back to the firms that have travelers and pay the fees and high wages. No nurses, no beds. No beds, no patients, no dollars.
So something has to be done. The hospitals could go a long way towards fixing it by paying the staff nurses that stay local the money the deserve for one. Make a benefit package that's hard to turn down. Pay back student loans. Offer bonuses for retention. Lots of options. Problem is, the hospitals are reluctant to reset the market in this way.
The other thing is that many nurses have now gone on 'to get my nurse practitioner' Fine. Problem is, there is a small market for those right now and with staff RNs there is a huge market. if the nurse lobby really wants to implement a change that would work to staff hospitals, they would severely curtail the numbers of NP schools and slots. They do not right now. These schools seem to have little in regard to standards for admission. Every single nurse I know has gotten into a program if they are willing to pay for it. I have never, one time, heard a nurse bemoan the admissions process and 'wonder if I will be able to get in' Unlike other medical advanced degree programs. Second, many if these are substandard online schools that poorly prepare one for an actual practice of medicine. So, we need less NPs and more RNs. Right now. As the market shifts, a shift in the model would be indicated, as it is in reverse, now.
Travellers and employed. The ones that are employed don't get the wages they ought too and the others get higher wages than they ought to. Nurses that are without families, no local obligations and don't care about all the benefits like retirement etc take the traveler jobs. They normally leave employed positions to become travelers as their freedom and the pay and lifestyle attract them. However, the nurses that have husbands, homes, lives outside of work that require them to stay local, cannot take advantage of the traveler positions so you have a lot of discontentment. They don't blame their colleague for getting what they can when they can but as others have said, when they leave FT positions for travelling this then forces the hospitals to hire for that position. If they cannot, then they have to go back to the firms that have travelers and pay the fees and high wages. No nurses, no beds. No beds, no patients, no dollars.
So something has to be done. The hospitals could go a long way towards fixing it by paying the staff nurses that stay local the money the deserve for one. Make a benefit package that's hard to turn down. Pay back student loans. Offer bonuses for retention. Lots of options. Problem is, the hospitals are reluctant to reset the market in this way.
The other thing is that many nurses have now gone on 'to get my nurse practitioner' Fine. Problem is, there is a small market for those right now and with staff RNs there is a huge market. if the nurse lobby really wants to implement a change that would work to staff hospitals, they would severely curtail the numbers of NP schools and slots. They do not right now. These schools seem to have little in regard to standards for admission. Every single nurse I know has gotten into a program if they are willing to pay for it. I have never, one time, heard a nurse bemoan the admissions process and 'wonder if I will be able to get in' Unlike other medical advanced degree programs. Second, many if these are substandard online schools that poorly prepare one for an actual practice of medicine. So, we need less NPs and more RNs. Right now. As the market shifts, a shift in the model would be indicated, as it is in reverse, now.
In a nutshell, what used to be a travel nurse was someone in Kansas City who decided to work in Tampa. What now consists of travel nurses are someone who decides to take a job at another hospital here in Kansas City.
He would be stupid not to. The gravy train is going to slow down. I would do the following:
1. Go to a city that needs nurses so travel pay is good.
2. Go to a city with a reasonable cost of living. For example, coming to KC could be fun for someone from Iowa, but not going to break the bank like Miami.
3. Live poor like you're doing in college. Many of these places have visiting nurses room together in apartment for reduced rent if they want.
4. Used increase debt to fund retirement first. Then fund student loans.
5. Develop skills they need to get the job long term in the section they want to....OR, ER, ICU, etc.
Do male nurses get paternity leave at UIHC? I don’t know. All I know is my wife talks about women returning when they want to have kids.
And, after I told her about this story she commented that many of the nurses who left to be traveling nurses never left the area. They travelled in Iowa, or kept a place here as home base.
I can imagine.
Wife is an RN and I asked a while ago why she didn’t consider the travel option. She made it sound like the travel nurses get a pile of crap when it comes to workload. You’re making all that extra money? You can get these headache patients with a crappy shift to boot.
I’m not at all sure that an NP makes more money than a specialist nurse. ED, ICU, OB etc. I know one NP who is a staff ED nurse because he can make more money. He is not a traveler.
This is also true. This was more common during the pandemic surges. Hospitals didn’t care. They were desperate. Now we are seeing it shift back in their favor, more back to normal volumes, almost back to pre-pandemic. Hospitals are cracking down on locals claiming to be travelers. Before the pandemic, many had radius rules. They are back to enforcing those rules. It takes a while to weed them out.
This is extremely common.
I’ve had some clients that had certain units that treated travelers like shit. Just awful to them. Eventually it became damn near impossible to find a Med Surg Rn for D4 of a certain hospital in PA.
