Travel Nursing Blog

Everything you need to know about travel nursing including finding travel nursing companies, negotiating pay, taxes, travel nursing jobs, and more.

Travel Nursing Company – Hospital Contracts

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A travel nursing company must have a contract with a facility in order to send travel nurses to work there. Contract provisions differ from contract to contract. However, it is standard for the contracts to contain a common set of provisions. These provisions include things like the bill rate, solicitation clauses, liability insurance requirements, contract termination rules, shift guarantee and cancellation policies, compliance and record management policies, billing and collection policies, and a host of others. Some of these provisions have a direct impact on the travel nurse.

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The Services Travel Nursing Companies Provide to Healthcare Employers

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Travel nursing companies are at the center of the healthcare staffing industry. They act as the “middle men” between the healthcare provider and the travel nurse. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of healthcare staffing agencies that are engaged in travel nursing contracts or PRN in the United States. Unlike “middle men” in many other industries, travel nursing companies provide an invaluable service that cannot be easily removed. There are some hospitals that attempt to cut out the middle man but such examples are few and far between, and typically require a unique set of circumstances. Read more

Types of Supplemental Staffing

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Supplemental staffing plays a large role in ensuring that hospitals and other healthcare providers remain adequately staffed at all times. There are essentially 4 main types of supplemental healthcare staffing: PRN, Seasonal, Locum/Travel Contracts, and Local Contracts. The type of supplemental staffing that hospitals and healthcare providers choose to utilize depends on the particular circumstances they’re faced with. Read more

The History of Modern Travel Helathcare and Travel Nursing

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Traveling healthcare professionals have been around in some form or another as long as there have been people with a passion and desire to care for the health and well being of others. However, this blog is focused on the modern supplemental healthcare staffing industry in the United States. Depending on how you define the beginning, it seems fairly typical to place the genesis of this now massive industry sometime in either the 1970s, or 1980s. Read more

Managing Your Compliance Documents as a Travel Nurse

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Travel nursing documentation is one of the biggest burdens that travel nurses have to contend with when landing a new travel nursing job. When I first started as a recruiter in 2006, it was standard to provide the facility with nothing more than copies of the nurse’s licenses, certifications, basic medical records, and a unit test. Now, every facility seems to have its own packet of facility specific documentation, testing, and orientation information that must be completed prior to starting a assignment. Read more

How to Handle References as a Travel Nurse

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Maintaining your professional references is extremely important when seeking travel nursing jobs. It will also be important when transitioning back to permanent employment. Every facility has its own requirements regarding references. For example, one common requirement for travel nursing jobs is: 2 supervisory clinical references covering 1 year of experience within the previous three years in the specialty applied for.

I’ve learned first hand that the best facilities have the most stringent requirements. For example, some facilities will not accept a travel nurse candidate without a reference from the candidate’s most recent Unit Manager. Solid references can be the differentiating factor in determining which candidate lands the travel job, or permanent nursing job. The problem is that while facilities require references, they also prohibit their employees from providing them. Read more

Better Questions to Ask Travel Nursing Companies

5 Better Questions to Ask Travel Nursing Companies

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It’s crucial for travel nurses to know what questions to ask when they are evaluating a new travel nursing recruiter or company. Asking the wrong questions can lead to ambiguous answers and confusion. In this article, we’ll take a look at some of the most common questions travel nursing recruiters receive. Then, we’ll provide some alternative questions designed to illicit explicit, clear-cut responses.
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