Travel Nursing: The Best of Both Worlds

The baseball world is exciting and challenging, and we wouldn’t have it any other way! But it can also be really hard for us WAGS to chase OUR dreams while helping the men we love chase theirs.

There is so much sacrifice involved, but the one thing I didn’t want to give up was the world I love. Thankfully, with nursing I didn’t have to.

My world - where I feel fulfilled and where my heart lies - is full of patients, pumps, pharmacology, pathophysiology, blood, more bodily fluids than I care to think about, intubations, compressions, and compassion.

This year our worlds collided in the most awesome God’s-plan-is-so-much-better-than-our-own kind of way. For the 2018 season, I joined the ranks of the gypsy healthcare professionals more formally known as Travel Nurses.

This year, I get to expand my professional career while following my husband around the country. Starting off in Florida from January to March and then wherever life (and the Red Sox) takes us from there.  

Here’s how:

When hospitals are short-staffed (maybe for busy season, like ski season in the mountains or “snowbirds” in Florida, or even a bad epidemic of the flu), they call travel nurse agencies, which in turn recruit nurses for short-term contracts (usually 13 weeks). Basically, nurses get to work and travel and make money. Can it get any better??

Actually, yes. Best part… drum roll please…the travel agency gives you a food stipend, housing stipend, and pays for your relocation on top of the hourly salary you make as a staff nurse.

Yes, you read that right.

I encourage everyone out there (especially WAGS!) who ever wanted to pursue a career in nursing to GO FOR IT. Nursing is an incredible world of opportunity and heart-wrenching moments that will forever change you. It will open your eyes to a completely new level of compassion and empathy. There’s nothing like knowing you truly made a difference in someone’s life. And there is nothing like doing it beside the baseball player you love!