Travel nursing is a great career move for any nurse. Lucrative travel nursing options offer adventure, higher pay, and numerous networking opportunities. It’s an excellent way to take control of your life and make a difference in other people’s lives. But, like most things, it does have a dark side.
The traveling healthcare industry is filled with travel agencies ready to help nurses cultivate a long-lasting, rewarding career—but not all of them live up to that promise. Many nurses are hesitant to become travelers because of the horror stories they hear about the poor treatment of travel nurses due to greed and ulterior motives. Those shady agencies prevent nurses from reaching their full potential in what should be the best time of their life and cast a long shadow over the travel nursing agencies that actually want to help.
Even with a few uncertainties lingering around the industry, becoming a travel nurse is still a good way to work with flexibility and freedom. Because there is an abundance of agencies to choose from, finding the right place for you boils down to one thing: trust.
Where Other Agencies Get It Wrong
Trust between a traveler and their travel nursing agency is a crucial yet delicate element in creating a successful working relationship. Travel nurse recruiters play an essential role in maintaining this relationship, but even they sometimes fail to deliver. As a traveler, you should feel confident that someone will always have your back every step of the way. Unfortunately, agencies taking advantage of their travel nurses has somehow become the accepted misconception in the travel nursing industry.
When agencies use their nurses only as means to their ends, travel nurses lose their faith in them; a divide begins to form, creating a “versus mentality.” You can see the disingenuous efforts through:
- Complex travel nurse contracts: Complicated processes and contracts keep travelers in the dark about their job and oblivious to their exploitation. The less they know about their contracts, the more money the agency makes.
- Steep pay cuts: Travel nurses endure secretive bill rates where they’re low-balled on their pay packages so the agency can get the most money from the assignment.
- Unsupportive travel nurse recruiters: Travelers are left to fend for themselves without help from the people they’re supposed to trust.
Without building a solid foundation, the relationship is doomed to fail. After all, working with a recruiter or travel nursing agency that sees you as nothing but a number can cause some severe stress in your life.
The Nurse First Way
For travel nurses to have the best experience possible, they need an agency they know can be trusted and doesn’t have an “us vs. them” mentality—agencies have to show travelers they’re on their side. At Nurse First Travel Agency, we ensure that the needs and desires of our travel nurses are always met, from the top travel nursing destinations to negotiating contracts for an ideal scenario.
We believe that travel nurses need to know absolutely everything about their new career, contract, etc., as they should be fully aware of what they’re getting into. Because nurses are the heart of this business, they should be managed the way they deserve and have the freedom to make decisions about their careers. That’s why Nurse First uses traveler advocates to fully support travel nurses, never negotiates contracts, and only has a 10% profit margin for completed travel nurse assignments.
Our entire team strives to give nurses all the tools it takes to be our competitors because we want them to grow as much as possible while they are with us. We want our travelers to feel that we have their backs undeniably. Travel nursing agencies like Nurse First aim to discourage insufficient trust between travelers and their agencies. Open communication, transparency, and dependability should be among the words travelers use to describe their experience working in travel nursing.
Don’t let a few rotten eggs ruin the reputation of a thriving industry. All travel nursing agencies are not created equal, so deciding where to entrust your career’s future will affect your income, manner of living, and state of mind—a decision you shouldn’t take too lightly.
You should always feel seen, heard, and validated wherever you go. An agency’s job is to always look out for the best interest of its nurses.
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