Wouldn’t it be great if there was a general travel nursing rulebook complete with dos and don’ts of the profession, as well as tricks to make it easier? Through the daily pressure to care for their patients, travel nurses often forget to practice self-care and find themselves as a nursing “horror story.”
To make sure that doesn’t happen to you, here are some helpful tricks and treats, plus tips, to ensure you avoid becoming a nursing horror story:
You may have heard of the term “ghosting.” It’s a word kids these days use to describe when someone in your life disappears into thin air without giving you a heads up or any kind of explanation. It frequently occurs within relationships, friendships, families, and even professions like travel nursing.
Many travel nurses will apply for a healthcare travel nursing job and then “ghost” their duties. It can happen at any point during the job-searching and/or hiring processes and it’s usually because most folk don’t enjoy confrontation or conflict. Not to mention, many people don’t want to hurt someone else’s feelings.
While it might feel like a good idea to pretend your responsibilities no longer exist, it rarely has a positive outcome. Next time you don’t feel like doing an interview call, texting your recruiter back, or even going to work, log into your Marketplace profile and try to muster up a few seconds of courage to message your recruiter. Communication is key to success.
There’s a reason why it’s called “ghosting.” It’s because the guilt of your actions will haunt you... and who wants that?
Have you ever heard of the superstition that a full moon brings out more lunacy? Or what about the one about things coming in threes?
Superstitions have been around for a long, long time. Superstitious behavior originated from our ancestors when they lived their lives actively trying not to be prey. However, that’s not a big issue in this century, so why are there still so many superstitions amongst professional travel nurses?
Many people take comfort in superstitions because the explanation that a superstition is true can feel more logical than a simple coincidence, particularly in times of high stress, like the environment in which nurses work. Superstitions can ease anxiety and fill in the blanks to things or events that feel impossible and/or supernatural.
Some of the popular superstitions in nursing include:
Even though it may sound good in the moment to give credit to superstition when some wild event happens during your shift, try to remain reasonable. To avoid becoming a nursing horror story, you must leave those superstitions at the door.
Are you a pro at procrastinating? As a traveling registered nurse (RN), one of the worst things you can do is procrastinate—whether that be with a recruiter conversation, updating your resume, a travel job application, or even getting your housing secured.
You don’t need to be told that speed-to-placement can make or break your travel job, so why wait? Especially when you have Marketplace to help streamline the overall job search and hiring process.
Your personal Marketplace traveler profile makes it effortless for you to browse through nursing jobs, compare benefits and pay across multiple staffing agencies, allow you to apply for several jobs at once with the click of a button, and even offers convenient housing options to choose from.
Procrastination can have negative consequences to your professional and personal life, so like Nike suggests, JUST DO IT. Your travel nursing career starts with you.
You’re often away from home for long periods of time so it would make sense that you might want to pack every inch of your home and bring it along on your travel nurse job. But don’t. The reality is that unnecessary items stealing valuable space in your temporary home will give you haunting nightmares.
Kylee Nelson, RN, admitted that she would “pack everything [she] owned” when she first started travel nursing. Now more than four years into the job, she said she only packs the “bare minimum” and starts with the necessities.
“I start by packing the necessities—scrubs, nursing gear, toiletries, and expand from there,” she said. “I’ll pick up to 20 to 30 outfits to bring with me (which sounds like a lot but trust me, it’s not!) and then bring a few pairs of shoes and purses.”
When it comes to packing for an assignment, it’s important to consider your destination’s weather and whether your temp house is fully furnished. Pack your outfits accordingly to your new location’s climate. Then, only bring along kitchen and living appliances, furniture, and supplies if they fall into the “necessities” category, like if your temporary housing isn’t already fully furnished.
Don’t make your travel nursing job dreadful by overpacking and follow Kylee’s advice: “Before you pack, start a list of things you’ll need to bring with you and add to it as things come to mind. Then once you’re ready to pack, you can pull up your list and it’ll feel less overwhelming.”
It’s hard to keep up with the times in this ever-changing travel nursing industry. But fear not! Marketplace has a range of features that make it easier and faster for you to find your travel RN jobs.
This fang-tastic job board website has everything you need to get to your next travel nursing assignment from up-to-date nurse job openings to the place you rest your head at night. Now it’s easier than ever to land your dream travel job because you have full autonomy over your nursing career. With Marketplace, you get to decide when, where, and how you work.
Easily search through nursing jobs and filter your results to only see postings that check off every box on your travel job search preferences checklist. Once there, you can compare nursing job opportunities across multiple staffing agencies to not only find the right job, but to find the right job with the right benefits and pay.
Now that you’ve narrowed down your nursing job options and you have all your relevant documents uploaded and saved to your profile, you can use the one-click apply button to put your name in the metaphorical hat but be ready for a call from an agency recruiter—and remember, ghosting isn’t cool.
While you wait to chat with a recruiter, take a look at housing options nearby your possible placement, plus other traveler housing trends based on location, so you know exactly what to expect when you get there. After you complete your nursing job, share your experience on Marketplace and leave your feedback so other travelers and healthcare professionals know how the travel process works and what it was like working with a specific recruiter.
Regardless of your specialty, you can find whatever you need to propel your travel nursing career on Marketplace.
There may not be a manual for how to be a travel RN, but there are things that can make the job harder. Take control of your nursing career and avoid becoming a nursing horror story. That means you leave superstitions out of your professional life and don’t ghost on your assignment, procrastinate throughout the process, or overpack. Plus, use Marketplace to make finding a travel job easier on yourself, so you can sit back and enjoy the thrill of it all!