How To Build a Brand As a Travel Nurse
The life of a travel nurse can be incredibly fulfilling – it means an opportunity to try out new cities on a regular basis, experiment with different hospital settings, and meet a steady stream of new people. While this constant change can undeniably be a good thing, one mistake that I often see travel nurses make is not being intentional or deliberate enough about their personal brand.
It’s easy to assume that there aren’t opportunities to build your brand the same way a staff nurse might. In reality, it’s actually just as important — and perhaps even more important — to be mindful of this because of the frequency with which you change jobs. You’re consistently offered a clean slate and an opportunity to make a first impression, but you should have a plan to maximize the time you spend at each hospital in the process of building your professional reputation. In this piece, I’ll be sharing four tried and true ways to do just that.
Pursue a Mission
One of the biggest appeals of being a travel nurse is the ability to change jobs frequently; however, it’s important to be thoughtful about the assignments you choose, as opposed to simply moving from one role to the next. In my role at Trusted, I work with a team of Nurse Advocates who help travel nurses navigate their careers, and we often advise the nurses we work with to consider their personal mission and motivators. Why are you a travel nurse? What are your values? What are your long term career goals? Taking time to think through these questions is a really valuable exercise that can help you be more deliberate about the work you choose and make the most of the unique and often transient opportunities.
For example, if you eventually want to become a clinical nurse educator, you should pursue a variety of experiences and care settings across your chosen specialty. An academic medical center might offer the chance to try the newest equipment and evidence-based approaches to care. And because you’ll be exposed to a dynamic care team where there is often teaching and shared learning among attendings, residents, and interns, it can be an amazing opportunity to learn more about diagnosing, result interpretation, and clinical decision making.
A community hospital is likely to have fewer resources and possibly slower adoption of new technology and research-driven approaches to care, so you’ll likely be in a position to be more creative. You’ll also get experience working with a different patient population than you would in an urban care setting. In a different way, a Magnet-designated hospital will likely offer a chance to gain deeper knowledge in your specialty with nurses who are the top of their field as well as access to nurse-led research and continuing education.
Ultimately, having a mission and understanding what is important for you to gain from each experience will help you filter the opportunities that come your way and make smart decisions that can help advance your career.
Be a Team Player
One of the single best ways to make a positive impression in a new role as a travel nurse is to find ways to get up and running quickly. For better or worse, nurse managers often form snap impressions about travel nurses, and their opinions are sometimes colored by previous not-so-great experiences with travelers, so it’s critical to get off to a positive start.
Use every opportunity to ask questions, observe and be flexible. It’s best to go into a new assignment without any assumptions about the culture of a particular unit or hospital and how they do things. The way every unit does hand-offs is different. The way that nurses take their breaks — if at all — can vary greatly. Be careful of assuming that what you’re used to is how it’s done where you are now or will be next.
It’s also important to avoid sitting on the sidelines or “flying under the radar.” Your primary job is to help units that are understaffed, which means you may be working alongside nurses who are overworked and stressed. Coming to work with a smile and a can-do attitude will not only help bolster your reputation, it fulfills your service and enables fellow nurses to do their jobs better. This philosophy also applies to developing personal relationships: it’s worth putting in the effort to get to know your coworkers, even though you may only be in a given role for a few months.
The bottom line is that the quicker you get off to a good start, the more likely you’ll be offered an extension or requested back in the future. And over time, you’ll hone your ability to context-shift quickly, which is a valuable skill in any nursing role.
Be a Best Practice Sponge
As a travel nurse, you have a built-in advantage because you’re consistently exposed to new environments and ways of doing things, and you should perceive each assignment not just as an opportunity to earn, but as a chance to learn. While the occasional impossible-to-please charge nurse or disorganized unit is unavoidable, even the worst jobs have something to teach you… even if it’s what not to do! Looking at challenging jobs through this lens is helpful when things get tough, because you can learn from what went wrong or think about what you might do differently in the future.
Each new role is a chance to build on what you’ve done in the past and to share some of that knowledge with your new colleagues. When I worked at UCSF, for example, there was a very strong culture of teamwork on my unit, and we had an unwritten rule that if you walked by a patient’s room and heard something beeping, you always checked in, even if it wasn’t your patient. This is an easy best practice to implement through example in a different hospital.
There is one important caveat to this guidance: delivery is everything. You never want to be the know-it-all nurse who is always preaching about what was done at your previous hospital. Your guiding principle should always be flexibility in learning new systems and protocols, but tactfully suggesting a different approach can make you stand out among your peers and help the unit improve. At the end of the day, diversity of experience is one of your biggest value-adds as a travel nurse, and using it to your advantage can be a major career booster.
End On a Positive Note
Just as it’s important to start an assignment with a good impression, it’s also important to end with one. An easy way to do this is by leaving a thank you note to your unit that expresses your gratitude for the time you worked together. I often advise nurses to mention one thing that you felt that the unit does really well. Not only does this bolster unit-culture, but it also helps seal it in your mind for future roles.
It’s also a good idea to establish a line of communication with your manager. It might be easy to go through an entire assignment without much interaction, but be sure to go out of your way to introduce yourself and thank your manager before your assignment ends. Even if there are no open roles on the unit at that particular moment, or you’re not sure you’d be interested in a full-time role, by staying in touch you can ensure that you’re top of mind if things change in the future. So add him or her on LinkedIn and be sure to check in periodically to let them know that you’re interested in working together again.
Speaking of LinkedIn, if you don’t already have a profile — I’d encourage you to sign up ASAP. It’s a powerful tool to stay in touch with people you meet on different assignments that also makes it easier for people who are looking to hire to find you. This is especially true if you’re open to non-traditional careers in nursing that may emerge as the field evolves. In fact, this is how I found my current role — I had a shared connection with the co-founder of Trusted. It’s also how we connect with nurses who are interested in becoming Nurse Advocates. What’s more, as of today, only 17% of nurses have a profile on LinkedIn, so you’ll have a distinct advantage if you create a profile and keep it up to date.
As a travel nurse, you always want to make it clear that you are there to learn and contribute, not just to collect a paycheck. Leveraging these four tactics is a guaranteed way to help position you as the latter and give you a leg up as you build your career.
About the author:
Sarah Gray is the Founding Clinician at Trusted Health, the career platform for the modern nurse. She is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania’s Nursing School and began her nursing career at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital. Prior to moving away from the bedside, she was a Clinical Nurse III and an Evidence Based Practice Fellow, and served on multiple hospital-wide committee boards. At Trusted, she utilizes her clinical insight and passion for innovation to change how nurses manage their careers and solve for inefficiencies within healthcare staffing.
