If you love to travel, but you also know that you need to start thinking about a career, you might think that you can have one but not the other. However, if you were to study to become a travel nurse, you can enjoy a rewarding career and still get to see lots of different places around the world; it’s the ideal thing to do, assuming you are happy to work in healthcare of course.
A travel nurse is someone who travels to different places and works for a short amount of time as temporary help. Usually, each assignment is around 13 weeks, although this can vary depending on what is required. You’ll be able to travel and to gain valuable experience in nursing, but there are some important things you’ll need to know before you embark on this particular career. Read on to find out more.
You’ll Need The Right Education
Being a traveling nurse is the same as being a nurse in a hospital and staying in one place in many ways, and that includes the education you’ll need to qualify and be able to apply for jobs around the country and the world.
This means you’ll need to complete your high school education and then move on to college and obtain a degree in nursing. Grad School Center shares that depending on how ambitious you are, you might then want to work towards a higher degree or qualification. However, in many cases, you will need the experience to be able to do this, and you might not think it would be an easy thing to do if you’re traveling around and can’t commit to attending one school for any length of time.
This is where online studying comes in useful. You can gain your experience, look into online DNP programs, and still continue to travel as you want.
You Must Be Adaptable as a Travel Nurse
Perhaps it goes without saying that you must be adaptable as a travel nurse, but it’s worth mentioning anyway, as the excitement of the adventure element can overwhelm everything else at times.
The fact is, you will be moving around and working in different places numerous times a year, and that means you need to be flexible about where you live, the type of accommodation you have, the people you meet, and the work you have to do. You’re a kind of agency nurse, so you’ll be filling in the gaps when people are on vacation or when there is a staff shortage, so although you might have a preferred area of the hospital to work in, you might not always be able to work there. You might have to do work you don’t enjoy.
To offset this potential issue, you will, of course, also be traveling to new places. On your days off you can explore and have adventures. So if you feel you can be adaptable in your working conditions and the pull of exploring new places is strong, being a travel nurse will work out well for you. Otherwise, you might be better off taking a job in a hospital or similar healthcare setting and taking as much vacation time as you can.
You Need To Be A Team Player
All nurses need to be great at teamwork; it’s one of the core skills that will help you get on and ensure that your colleagues and your patients are as happy and well cared for as possible. However, as a travel nurse, this skill is perhaps even more important. That’s because you need to quickly gain the trust of those you are working with – you don’t have time for them to get to know you properly as you need to get working right away, and this is not easy. However, it’s something that travel nurses have to do.
The sooner the team you’re working with sees you as part of them, the sooner you can get on with your job and help them out in the way you’re meant to. There is no point in you going somewhere only to find that you’re not given any useful jobs to do because no one really trusts that you can do it. Right from the start, you need to show yourself as a team player and get stuck in proving your worth.
You also need to be able to communicate with a lot of different people, and this is all part of showing who you are and that you can be trusted. You might even need to speak another language, so showing this is crucial. All in all, you need to be part of each new place you go to, even if you’re only going to be there for a matter of weeks.
You Need To Pack Well
Although this isn’t restricted only to travel nurses, and it actually relates to anyone who travels, whether for pleasure or for work, it’s still an important fact to know; you need to know how to pack well.
Since you’ll be moving from place to place, sometimes at a moment’s notice, and you’ll often be staying with host families rather than hotels and apartments, having just a few belongings with you is the best thing you can do. You’ll need your nursing qualifications (although these can be carried digitally or stored on the cloud, so you don’t have to take paper copies around with you), your travel documents, your uniform (although again, this might be provided at the hospital or healthcare clinic you are working at, as each will be different), good shoes, and some clothes for your days off.
Anything else will depend on what you need and what you feel you can’t manage without. So you might want to bring your good camera with you, or perhaps your laptop so you can watch your favorite shows when you’re relaxing. Maybe you’ll take your eReader.
No matter what it is you need or want, however, you must think carefully – you’ll have to pack it all and carry it very often, so you’ll want to pack light.
Want to read more of our latest posts? Check our article about all you need to know when traveling from Penn Station.
