I found this in the "Travel Nurses talk to Travelers" area and wanted to comment.
stellar
Member
Join Date: Aug 2008
Posts: 49 Re: travel and the econony
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I recently stumbled across another nursing site and was very dismayed to read some of the posts. There were the standard glowing articles about how nursing will withstand everything, but then there are the anecdotals of seasoned travel nurses who say things like, "It is the worst [they] have seen in 12 years of travel nursing." It basically seems like a ripple effect. Fewer elective surgeries was a consistent remark, leading to lower census. Fear in the general public and so per diem nurses locally are taking permanent positions, or their spouses have been laid off such as three of my current coworkers, or they need to supplement thier income and so they are working tons of overtime and the need for travelers decreases. And then there is the push from management to get permanent staff and to cut travelers, all of which seem to be lowering the requests for travelers. Where it goes from here I think is anybody's guess, but to suggest that the above dynamics will not effect traveling, at least in the short term, like 6-12 months, is myopic IMHO. My feeling is you are taking a risk to leave a permanent job right now, but each person has to decide how much of a risk they are comfortable with.
I am beginning to hear this more an more all over the counrty. From a recruitment standpoint, it seems like career suicide to decide to work PRN right now. As the above momber wrote, with the census dropping everywhere and full timers picking up overtime, nurses working PRN seem to only work a handful of full shifts per month. I wanted to introduce this to a new forum to see if I could get some other perspectives.