{"id":4508,"date":"2023-02-10T14:15:56","date_gmt":"2023-02-10T14:15:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.vivian.com\/community\/?p=4508"},"modified":"2024-04-09T21:25:12","modified_gmt":"2024-04-09T21:25:12","slug":"do-travel-nursing-agencies-for-new-graduates-exist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vivian.com\/community\/travel-nursing\/do-travel-nursing-agencies-for-new-graduates-exist\/","title":{"rendered":"Travel Nursing Agencies for New Graduates – Do They Exist?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Is travel nursing for new grads possible? <\/span>The short answer is no; these jobs usually don\u2019t exist. Traditionally, <\/span>travel nurse jobs<\/span><\/a> have been reserved for registered nurses (RNs) with at least one year of experience. However, there have been and will likely be exceptions due to the booming nursing industry and ongoing nursing shortage. There\u2019s a lot new graduate nurses should know about their travel nursing future and just how soon they might be able to break into this lucrative <\/span>nursing career path<\/span><\/a>, so keep reading.<\/span><\/p>\n

Past Exceptions to the New Grad Travel Nursing Rule<\/b><\/h3>\n

In the past, travel nursing almost universally required at least one full year of clinical experience in a specialty and sometimes even two years for higher acuity specialties like ICU, ED, L&D, PICU, CVOR, etc. But during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, hospitals were more desperate for nurses than ever before.<\/span><\/p>\n

This unprecedented health crisis stretched healthcare systems across the nation so thin that it exacerbated the existing nursing shortage. In 2020, some states were paying travel nurses more than $8,000 a week to fill in at their hospitals, making these travel gigs some of the <\/span>highest-paying temporary assignments<\/span><\/a> to date.<\/span><\/p>\n

These crisis contracts usually required travel nurses to work 48 to 72 hours a week in high-acuity, COVID-saturated hospitals frantic for staff. Although this type of situation wasn\u2019t ideal for new RNs with little experience, a few agencies hired graduate nurses for travel work as team nurses in hard-hit places like New York City.<\/span><\/p>\n

The agencies paired new grads with other, more experienced RNs, so they rarely took their own assignments. When you hear about new grad RNs travel nursing, this is likely what\u2019s being discussed. On the downside, many of these new grad travel nurses received a crash course-like orientation to the unit but were never adequately oriented to their specialty and profession. Once enough experienced RNs signed up for travel roles, agencies stopped dipping into the new grad RN pool.<\/span><\/p>\n

To this day, staffing gaps still exist. Due to the extreme need for nurses, some facilities and agencies are beginning to work with less experienced staff to help fill the gaps. Some hospitals may be willing to hire new grads directly into certain specialties as permanent staff and some travel nursing agencies may accept nurses with less than one year of experience. But that doesn\u2019t mean they get to travel right away.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Demand for Travel Nurses<\/b><\/h3>\n

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The <\/span>shortage of nurses<\/span><\/a> isn\u2019t new, and it doesn\u2019t appear that it will get better anytime soon. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, many healthcare facilities struggled to fill open nursing positions, with some states facing worse shortages than others.<\/span><\/p>\n

A pre-pandemic supply and demand study from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services projected nursing shortages through 2030. Of the states expected to experience shortages, California had the most significant shortage of 44,500 full-time equivalent RNs. The deficiencies felt nationwide have several potential causes, including:<\/span><\/p>\n