It’s like a super storm of opportunity. a significant nursing shortage meets a certified professional that just doesn’t would like to get tied down in one place for too long. Put together this wandering soul and a short lived position in a hospital and you’ve got a travel nurse.

There is a significant shortage of nurses in this country. The typical age of a registered nurse is around 49 and as they quit, retire or burn available aren’t enough nurses to exchange them. As well, there aren’t enough instructors in our nursing schools to educate all of those who desire to enter the nursing profession. Since there aren’t enough nurses getting into the system to interchange the nurses throwing in the towel, hospitals just don’t have enough nurses to fill each of the positions.

So what is a desperate Human Resource Director of an important health center to do- They must hire somebody to fill within the gaps although it’s only on a short lived basis. And a growing number of that ” somebody” is a travel nurse.

Travel nursing started as a strategy to seasonal population growth in Sunbelt states. Throughout the winter, northern ” snowbirds” migrated to warmer climates in states like Florida and Arizona. Consequently, hospitals in these states saw a spike in activity through the winter months and they couldn’t afford to staff up year round to be able to meet this temporary upswing well-liked. A solution was to recruit nurses to come back on board for a set time frame until the part-time seasonal citizens returned to their permanent homes for the summer.

It was a pretty, mutually beneficial arrangement. Hospitals could hire nurses for roughly 13 weeks to fill a brief need without adding permanent staff. Nurses could travel to very attractive sunny states throughout the winter and luxuriate in themselves throughout the off hours. It was like getting paid to take a vacation, although the work is simply as demanding. During days off or after hours, nurses were essentially tourists. Plus, the pay was pretty darn good.

But over the last couple of decades, the seasonal aspect of the travel nurse industry has changed. The nursing shortage now not runs from December through February. This is a year-round national crisis. There are simply not enough nurses to fill each of the available positions and the travel nurse industry has exploded consequently. The competition among recruiters is fierce and the nurse willing to head faraway from home for anywhere from 13 to 26 weeks is a hot commodity.

Travel nurse jobs come in all 50 states. It’s miles possible for a nurse to identify a destination that he or she is fascinated with and search around until they find an appropriate position, at the correct time, inside the right institution, for the appropriate pay. Travel nurses can command from $25-$55 per hour in addition to significant benefits and, on occasion, free housing. It’s not unusual to qualify for a sizable bonus at the completion of an assignment.

Even if most nurses are compensated really well, travel nurses and receive significantly more than the nurses on the permanent staff. This, along side a perceived lack of commitment to the power, can cause a little bit resentment. But, generally, the permanent staff recognizes that these temporary nurses fill an important need and forestall the workload from becoming unmanageable.

The nursing shortage should not abate any time soon so the opportunity to travel, work hard, make a perfect income, fill a need and have an outstanding time will probably be available to nurses that need to hit the road for years yet to come.

J. Terrence McDermott is the administrator of Travel Nurse Source, at http://www.travelnursesource.com, a resource center for travel nurses. Travel Nurse Source helps identify medical staffing needs and find qualified nurses to satisfy those needs.