Who Am I, And What Is Travel Nursing?
I guess I should introduce myself. I'm Aaron. I've been a MICU (Medical Intensive Care Unit) nurse since the start of 2005. I became this after graduating from a previous undergraduate program with bachelors in biology, which yielded squat as far as jobs go. So, I backpacked Europe and Chile, did poorly paid and relatively horrible jobs for a few years, and ended up going through an accelerated, second-bachelors nursing program at Duke University. In the end, I ended up with the same education as nearly every other nurse out there (including associates degrees) except with a much larger student loan load than most others. At any rate, I landed in a MICU.
Who am I? Well, I love travel and photography, and I run a website that blends both. My escape plan from nursing (you need one of those; if you don't have one, get one) is to invest in a microbrewery and run it. I've been married since March of 2007. That's me in a nutshell.
Travel nursing is fairly easy to describe. For those unaware of the medical profession, there is a massive nursing shortage which will only get worse in the next decade as an entire generation of nurses retires. As a splendid side effect of this, hospitals need to fill short-term holes in their staffing. Therefore, they are willing to pay large sums of money to people willing to sign an average of 13 weeks in a contract. Some contracts are shorter, some longer, most are 13 weeks. This means for 13 weeks, a nurse will work in a unit or floor or whatever. They will actually be employed by an agency rather than the facility, and will usually have their housing paid for. Other financial treats include travel expenses, insurance stipends, housing stipends when travelers share apartments (such as my wife and I--we get free housing and a big chunk of change), and much more. The offside is that you have to be willing to give up the security of a normal job, be willing to step into the role of a nurse with as little as a single day of orientation, and be able to move around alot. Which for my wife and I hasn't been a problem yet.
There will be much more of a description of our own definition of travel nurses to follow. I'll put up good links as well.
