Your work as a travel nurse provides safer staffing and saves lives!

Most nurses are inspired to do what they do for altruistic reasons. The idea and practice of helping others in need is a huge motivator for those within or thinking about joining the nursing profession.

Because of this drive to help others, many nurses struggle with improper staffing levels, knowing they are giving their all but sometimes unable to deliver the best patient care possible when assigned too many patients or put into an unsafe situation on the job.

This is why travel nursing is such a crucially important career path!

Travel nurses go where they are most needed, to provide care to patients and much-needed relief to overworked perm staff.

Many surveys have indicated that nurse staffing levels are quite often unsafe and more nurses may be needed to provide proper patient care within hospitals. Yet another recent survey, commissioned by the Massachusetts Nurses Association/National Nurses United, indicated that nurses reported that understaffing led to patient injury (46%), longer hospital stays (51%), and medication errors (57%).

Travel nursing is a way to sort of double down on helping others. You can help patients, hospitals, and other nurses — all while taking the opportunity to travel and explore new locations!

If you’re thinking about getting into travel nursing but don’t know where to begin, Travel Nursing Central can be an excellent resource for you. This site offers advice, checklists, information on housing, updates on current events and news relevant to the industry, and information and rankings on hospitals and travel nursing companies.

One of our most popular site features is our annual ranking of travel nurse companies. Click here to see the list for 2014.

With an important understanding for how travel nurse staffing saves lives, we are happy to help you get on the road to helping others through travel nursing. Click around and let us know if you have any questions!

Thumbs up for building an awesome career through travel nursing!

Travel nursing isn’t just a great way to see the country (although it definitely is that!). It’s also a really great chance for nurses to build their careers and advance professionally in the long run.

Here are 3 ways travel nursing improves your career by helping in your professional development:

Practicing Flexibility  

All nurses must learn to roll with the punches, as hospital work bring often brings surprises and demands that you think on your feet. But travel nurses really learn and get to practice adaptability and flexibility, which is awesome for your professional growth and makes you even more marketable wherever you go in the future.

Getting a Variety of Experience         

Travel nurses get exposure to a lot of different colleagues, diverse patient demographics, and facilities (and their various different ways of doing things). In each of these areas this variety of experience will make you stronger professionally and a better nurse.

The strengthening of your base of experience is also a great confidence booster. After a few assignments travel nursing you’ll have seen a lot, and that experience shows yourself and others that you can handle anything! Experiencing new ways of doing things and being in contact with a greater variety of people, personalities, and patient situations also does a lot to enrich you as a person.

Growing Professionally (And Personally)

Having travel nursing on your resume will follow you forever — in a good way! When hospital administrators see travel nursing in your file it automatically tells them that you are dependable, flexible, highly skilled, experienced in a number of hospital environments, and extremely dedicated to patient care. A July 2012 study by Nursing Management reflected that travel nurses grew professionally (and personally) while working on assignment. travel nursing increases your technical skill set and teaches you new things on and off the job.