On the Road Again

The life of a travel nurse. I am currently sitting in a hotel en route from the DC area to Phoenix, AZ. I have to report to work in Phoenix next Monday and can move in to my apartment on Friday. My goal is to be there on Friday. It will be nice to spend the winter in Phoenix, though travelling cross country, 2300 miles, with my 2 sons, 4 and 5 yrs old, is a challenge in and of itself. Also just shipped 12 boxes of clothes, etc. to myself as we have more than our poor little Camry can carry. What an adventure this will be. This time, instead of the county hospital in Phoenix, I will instead be working at the children’s hospital. It will be interesting to see if there is much difference. I started out traveling for many reasons, one being that having worked at Duke Hospital for my entire nursing career, I wanted to see if their ego was deserved. To some degree, it is, but it mostly has to do with volume and experience. We, my wife and I, also felt that with our children being the age they are, that now is the ideal time to do this. They are old enough to appreciate what is happening, yet young enough to not have all the ‘I don’t want to leave my friends’ concerns. For all the stress that moving every 13 weeks causes, I wouldn’t trade it for the world. From a nursing perspective, it is heaven. I do not get involved in the ‘politics’ of the hospital or unit I am working on. I go to work, do my job and go home. There is the downside of having to learn new systems, processes, etc. every place I go, but I treat it as a learning experience. So, all in all, I come in, help fill staffing holes, ignore the pettiness of politics and have fun doing what I do. All this and I, unfortunately, get paid more than the full-time employees. Through all of it, my agency is my employer, so in a resume sense, I am not changing jobs at all. I will continue to update on the ups and downs of traveling as time allows.