The Cons of Travel Nursing

There are plenty of great reasons to become a Travel Nurse, but the Cons of Travel Nursing are not discussed as frequently. I was a Travel Nurse for 3 years, and I can attest to the true highs and lows of this profession.

What is Travel Nursing?

Travel Nurses are hired by agencies and placed at Healthcare Facilities that are in need of short-term nurses. Typically, a contract is 3 months, but this can vary a bit. Hospitals may need Travel Nurses due to changing computer systems, maternity leave, simply being short-staffed, or other reasons.

I wrote about the Pros of Travel Nursing first, so you can find those here. I am not trying to sway you to not become a Travel Nurse. In fact, I continued to do it for 3 years despite the Cons of Travel Nursing on this list. In all honesty, I think the Pros outweigh the Cons, but Travel Nurse Agencies and other sites can make Travel Nursing sound like it’s nothing but glamorous. This is not true.

Moving sucks. When you see the lists of things that cause stress to humans, one of the big ones is moving. You will be doing this every 3 months, so I want to be open and honest about what that entails.

For general advice on Travel Nursing, I have that for ya too.

Figured I should say hi so you know you’re getting advice from a real human.

#1. You never get comfortable in a city.

It takes more than 3 months to really get to know a place.

The day you discover your favorite coffee shop is the day you have to start thinking about your next contract. You finally learn how to get to your job without GoogleMaps, and then you have to start using GoogleMaps to find an apartment in your next city. You spend time finding the best grocery store, brewery, brunch spot, and running path, but you never get to fully experience them before moving on to the next town.

It’s tough feeling like a stranger in every town you live.

#2. It can be quite lonely.

If you don’t travel with friends or to friends/family, it can be a lonely way to do life. It is hard to make instant friends, so every time you move, you are alone in a new place. You can explore, but you won’t have someone to share in your new adventures.

It is often possible to become friends with fellow Travel Nurses or your coworkers, but you and they always know that you’ll be moving on in a couple months. It is more difficult to develop meaningful friendships.

#3. All the paperwork.

I swear that Travel Nursing is more of a testament to how well you can fill out paperwork and get vaccines/TB tests than how good of a nurse you actually are. Every 3 months, a new contract will somehow come up with a new vaccine that you need or require new computer program training or insist that you have a physical from a doctor who lives in Kansas or tell you to get your labs drawn at a place that hasn’t been open since 1980. Oh, and you must have everything complete in 4 days. I spent so much stressful time trying to get everything worked out in between contracts, and it never got easier.

Read Next : How to Adventure More as a Travel Nurse

#4. Lack of training.

Healthcare facilities hire Travel Nurses because they need a Nurse STAT. They don’t have time to give you an in-depth orientation, nor do they want to pay you for that (Travel Nurses are paid more than regular staff). One contract I had gave me 8 hours of training on the floor, and this was meant to be adequate for me to float to multiple units. Gah.

While you can get used to learning on the fly, it is harder to do your job if you aren’t given enough training.

#5. Being on a new floor puts you at a disadvantage.

You’re new. You don’t know who to ask for help, you don’t know where the pagers are kept or if you even need a pager, you can stare at the supply room contents for 45 minutes and not find a certain roll of tape, and only God knows how to get a hold of a doctor when your patient develops a fever. You are new, and you will feel that sometimes.

#6. You will get harder patient assignments.

This one sucks. I have a lot of respect for nurses and don’t like to think that units would “dump on” the travel nurse. Unfortunately, it happens whether it’s purposeful or not.

If you’ve worked on a hospital unit, you know that there are patients that suck the life out of you and your coworkers. The ones who are manipulative or needy or mean. The ones that wear out nursing staff in just one shift. When a charge nurse is making an assignment, knowing that her nurses might need a break from a certain patient, it makes sense that a new, not yet worn out, Travel Nurse could be given that patient. The only problem is, the new Travel Nurse then gets assigned all the suck-the-life-out-of-you patients. It sucks.

And because of the previous reasons of being on a new floor and not having much training, your job is exponentially harder.

#7. Dating is tough.

Dating is tough. Period. It’s even tougher when you have to explain to every potential mate that you will be moving in 2-3 months. It then either becomes nothing because people don’t know what to do with that information, a fling because you both know it won’t go anywhere, or too serious too fast with talk of long distance, moving, etc.

Obviously, there are exceptions to these Danielle-made rules, but I would guess that most Travel Nurses would agree that dating is harder as a Travel Nurse than in regular life.

#8. Every 3 months, you will convince yourself that you will be homeless.

Finding an apartment is always a pain. Finding short-term, furnished housing on short notice is sometimes close to impossible. Often, Travel Nurse Agencies provide housing, but this housing can be costly and not always in the best part of the city. Once you decline it, you then have to find your own. I seemed to always have a week when I would have no housing lined up, and I’d contemplate what it would be like to live on the streets or at a campground. I always managed to find somewhere to stay, but it was stressful nonetheless.

#9. You might just hate it.

You might hate the city, the weather, the people, the job, the crappy apartment you picked, or the traffic. Leaving a contract early can cost you money and not look great for the next job, so you might have to stick it out for 3 months while hating where you are.

#10. Nursing Licenses.

I could go on a rant about how every state in the United States should be a compact state and how absurd it is to have to pay certain states a crap ton of money to obtain a nursing license there when they are so clearly in need of more nurses. But I will just say that getting different nursing licenses is time-consuming, expensive, and often enraging. (Sorry, California, but you’re the worst.)

#11. You are at the mercy of who needs Nurses.

While you can often land a Travel Nurse job somewhere that you want to go, there are other times that Travel Nurses just aren’t needed. Either not enough women are having babies or the hospital doesn’t want to cover the cost of a Travel Nurse or places are better retaining their full-time nurses. There can be lulls in job availability. You then have to decide on a place that’s not ideal or wait it out.

Because you’re at the mercy of who needs nurses, night shift jobs or hospitals that require you to rotate between night and day shift are often the more available options. Night shift can be rough, so I wrote Tips on Rotating Shifts for Travel Nurses to help you out with this.

Now that you know all the Cons of Travel Nursing you can make an educated decision on whether or not it is right for you. If you haven’t read the 11 Reasons to be a Travel Nurse yet, read that next. And if you’re signing a contract or are already a Travel Nurse, read my advice. If you have any Cons to add, I’d love to hear them. Comment below!

If you decide to become a Travel Nurse, I worked with Cross Country and was always able to find great contracts with them. Shoot me an email [email protected] so we can talk about it!

Pin for later!