5 Requirements To Becoming a Travel Nurse
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1. Home is where the taxes are:
- There is this general rule of thumb in the traveling world that if you are traveling over 50 miles from your home that you are legally qualified to consider yourself a traveler
- The government will allow you to earn tax free money as long as your place of employment is far enough away that you have to stay overnight prior to returning home.
- In order to obtain tax free stipends, you must maintain a “tax home.”
- If you do not have a tax home, you can still be a travel nurse, but you will not earn tax free stipends
2. Years on the job:
- Most travel nursing agencies require that you have been a practicing bedside nurse for at least one year.
- If you are specialized in the areas of ICU, cath lab or OB, most agencies require that you have at least one year of additional experience in that specialty before traveling.
3. Necessary certifications:
- You do not need a Bachelor’s Degree in Nursing (BSN) to be a travel nurse, however, many hospitals prefer Bachelors trained nurses
- You will of course have to have a current Basic Life Support (BLS) and Advanced Cardiac Life Support (ACLS) certification for those specialties that require ACLS.
- Your recruiter will let you know what certifications are necessary prior to beginning your assignment.
4. Licensed to nurse:
- Have to be licensed in state you wish to work in
- If you are lucky, you will have come from a state that is part of the Nurse Licensure Compact (NLC) also known as a compact state. This allows you to travel to multiple states without having to obtain a new license
- If your home state is not part of the NLC then you will have to obtain either a permanent or temporary license for each state you plan on traveling to
5. Keeping up with your CEU’s
- There are some states that require a certain number of Continuing Education Units (CEUs) to renew your license as well as a small fee every two years.
