Travel nursing recruiters look at the field from their own perspective. Jonathan Tubbs, an Atlanta travel nursing recruiter and senior account executive with Soliant Health, works with Cote and other nurses, and has been doing so for the past 12 years.
We recently spoke with Tubbs about travel nursing from the recruiter’s point of view.
On his job:
“I facilitate helping hospitals find travel nurses and help the nurses find their jobs wherever they may be nationwide. I offer my expertise to know what hospitals are good to work at and what they can pay. A good nurse recruiter will have that kind of expertise to help a nurse navigate the vast amount of jobs across the country or close by.”
On the needs of hospitals:
“Really every major hospital here in town uses travel nurses. The reason they do is let’s say they have a high census during a certain time of the year, maybe the summer or winter, depending on what’s happening. It may be the flu, lots of accidents or other things going on. They may need more nurses to come into work. …The length of time to bring someone on full-time is a pretty lengthy process. ..The flip side of that is when that busy time is over, they would have to give them less hours than full-time or lay them off. To bridge that gap during the busy times, they bring a temporary person in.”
On travel nurses learning new skills:
“In the scope of working as a nurse, you’re limited to your general area most of the time. But there are some new positions, such as interventional radiology, travel nurses are learning. A lot of hospitals are using interventional radiology as treatment, because it’s a minimally evasive procedure. …Many nurses can go into that field with minimal training, and stay in that field in ICU, the recovery room or PACU. They can get on-the-job training for interventional radiology. Along with getting more pay and a different location, they can learn a skill on the job and take it with them to another location. As a recruiter, we try to think of ways we can fill a job to help a client, but also give value to the nurse while they’re going there. They can take that with them for the rest of their career.”
You could say Alabama-based RN Mary Cote has a traveling jones.
We’re not talking hitting the highway on a Harley or jet-setting across the globe. It’s the niche of travel nursing that keeps a smile on Cote’s face.
“When I was in nursing school,” said Cote, who’s currently working a travel nurse contract at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta (CHOA) at Scottish Rite, “a lot of the agencies came at the end of the graduating year to talk about travel nursing jobs. I thought it was something I would like to do.”
She thought right. Cote eventually became a travel nurse, which requires her to leave home and fill specific needs at long distance hospitals for several weeks at a time. The perks, from higher pay and a flexible work schedule to visiting new places, have her wanting to continue chalking up miles.
Before trekking down the road of travel nursing, Cote suggests working at least two to three years in a certain hospital area, be it the OR, ICU, ER or another department. She spent 12 years as a surgical technologist before becoming an RN and working in the OR. After graduating from nursing school in 2009 and then working the next several years in the field, Cote cranked up her travel nursing career in 2012.
Once she decided to become a traveler, Cote needed to align herself with a travel nursing recruiter. Travel nurses have access to an array of recruiting companies. Some of the more popular include TotalMed Staffing, FlexCare Medical Staffing, Advanced Surgical, and Medical Staffing Solutions, Inc. Since entering the field, Cote has remained with Soliant Health.
“There are a lot of travel companies out there,” Cote said. “So you need to do some research and ask around. Soliant just stood out to me. You may find a good company, but not a good recruiter. You may have to change up every now and then. Do your homework, and find out where it is you’re going to be comfortable.”
With a recruiter’s guidance, the nurse peruses the opportunities at hospitals in the locale she or he would like to visit. Since nurses must be licensed to practice in individual states, a traveler must take care of the appropriate paperwork to do so. Cote, for instance, has an Alabama license and a Georgia-endorsed license. She says she also has her California license so she can one day acquire a contract in the Golden State and take advantage of its beaches on off days.
After pinpointing a location and choosing a particular assignment, the recruiter sets up an interview with a representative of that respective hospital.
If both parties agree on the fit and the length of time —Cote says she takes a lot of 13-week assignments— the nurse proposes a list of terms. Prefer to have weekends and holidays off? Then have it written into the contract.
“Travel nursing just offers the best of both worlds,” Cote explained. “You get higher-than-average pay, and you choose where and when you want to work.”
When Cote chose her most recent Atlanta-area contract, she picked CHOA at Scottish Rite. Cote asked to work four 10-hour days each week and had it written in the contract that her employer would alternate Mondays and Fridays off. This gives her long weekends to spend back home.
During the work week, however, Cote needs a place live. After negotiating a contract with a hospital, travel nurses receive what they call a housing stipend. Travelers can take those funds and find housing themselves, or they can allow the company that they work for to find housing. According to Cote, most travelers take this non-taxed stipend and secure housing on their own. If the company does it for you, you forfeit the stipend.
When it comes to housing, Cote prefers renting a room or a basement apartment from a private home owner. While working a contract at Northside Hospital in 2012, Cote struck a friendship with a fellow nurse who had space to rent out of her home. Today Cote rents from her when working in the Atlanta area.
For the nurses themselves, travel nursing comes rife with pros, but what about the hospitals? They score benefits of their own, Cote explains.
If a hospital runs short on nurses in specialty areas, the administration can’t simply snatch up a floor nurse and drop her into a niche situation. Allowing an experienced travel nurse to step in swiftly solves a hospital’s staffing problem, while giving the institution time to continue recruiting to permanently fill that position.
“You need someone that already knows what they’re doing to fill that spot,” Cote said. “It takes time to train nurses to take that job. So if you have a shortage or a need, you have to get a traveler who knows that job.”
When Cote signed on at CHOA at Scottish Rite, she found herself working in facial reconstruction surgical procedures repairing cleft palates. While a new employee receives a six-month orientation, Cote says she had approximately one week to get the lay of the land. With her OR background, Cote’s ability to quickly navigate the operating room and adapt to the procedure saw her plugging in right off the bat.
“You have to be the type of nurse that can hit the ground running,” Cote said. “If you’re not a quick picker-upper, then traveling is not for you. You have to be a go-getter, be quick on your feet and know what you’re doing, because they’re not going to baby the travelers.”
Yet while working at CHOA at Scottish Rite, Cote has the opportunity to baby her patients, literally. Her stint at CHOA —Cote has extended her contract four times over the past year— marks her first time working in a pediatric setting. While travel nursing continues to put a smile her face, she’s able to help her pint-size patients have big smiles of their own.
By being involved in many plastic reconstruction surgeries, Cote says the learning experience and wealth of knowledge sets her up to do mission work through Operation Smile, a charity organization that provides free cleft palette repair to children all over the world.
“This experience with facial surgeons and babies is exciting,” Cote says. “Working on a child’s smile and seeing their facial features change is so very rewarding.”
