Hospitals statewide are desperate for nurses. Those willing to travel are receiving their highest-ever pay.
Her standard contract was 13-weeks. The opportunity to live in new places without committing to permanent employment felt liberating.
When the pandemic came, Ingram saw the market for travel nurses evaporate as hospitals canceled elective surgeries. For a few months, she returned home to High Point, North Carolina, and briefly went on unemployment. But the demand for nurses quickly rebounded — and then some.
“There was a minute where a lot of nurses were sitting at home, and then it was like boom,” said Ingram, who recently completed a contract at Asheville’s Mission Hospital that paid $3,700 a week. She’s earned much more: Last January, during a COVID surge, she worked in a hospital in Fresno, California, for around $5,000 a week.
As hospitals’ need for nurses collides with permanent staff exiting the field, facilities nationwide are attracting travelers with contracts worth two to three times their typical salaries. In a profession not known for big paychecks, the money is convincing more nurses to embrace the itinerant lifestyle.
“A lot of people are just really utilizing it as their way to take control back,” Ingram said.
At Mission, the largest hospital in Western North Carolina, Ingram estimated around 75% of nurses on some floors are travelers.
“Every shift there are more travelers than there are permanent staff,” said Rebekah Beebe, 31, who is completing her first travel nurse contract at Mission following five years in the Duke University…