This Travel Nurse Compared His Current Salary To His Pay As Staff RN, And It'll Make You Reconsider Career Paths
Before COVID-19 hit, hospitals were already facing nursing shortages, and now this trend has been exacerbated by the pandemic and feelings of burnout.
According to one survey by the American Association of Critical Care Nurses, 92% of nurses surveyed said "they believe the pandemic has depleted nurses at their hospitals and, as a result, their careers will be shorter than they intended," and 66% agree that "their experiences during the pandemic have caused them to consider leaving nursing."
As hospitals struggle to retain their staff, the demand for travel nurses — registered nurses who bounce from hospitals to clinics and other healthcare facilities across the world on short-term contracts — has boomed. One of the main reasons for this can be attributed to their pay, which can sometimes reach up to $10,000 per week — a far cry from their $70,000 average yearly salary in rural areas.
Recently, Alex Kim, a registered pediatric hematology and oncology nurse who made the switch from holding a stationed nursing position to becoming a travel nurse, went viral for candidly sharing the difference between his paychecks before and after the change.
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In the video, which has been viewed over 3.7 million times, Alex explains, "I just got my first travel paycheck today. I'm going to show you how much that was and how it compares to being a staff nurse."
"Just so that we can compare, this is what I made as a staff nurse," he continued while displaying a screenshot of his paycheck behind him. "I made $827 per week."
"And this is what I make right now as a travel nurse," he concluded. "It is $3,627 after taxes, and this is every single week. So, it's pretty insane."
When speaking to the 24-year-old about why he decided to become a travel nurse, Alex told BuzzFeed, "Before this, I was living paycheck to paycheck [and] the thought of saving money was just a pipe dream. With my previous position, I also worked an additional two jobs working in outpatient surgery centers for extra cash. I never had time to see my friends or to even go on a vacation since starting my career as a nurse."
"Now, as a travel nurse, I am making almost four times my previous occupations," he said. "Now, I only work three times a week rather my usual five days, gaining more free time for more pay. With the money I have now, I am able to save for a down payment for a house, an engagement ring, pay off all my debt, and finally go on a vacation. This is life-changing money for me, and with only one paycheck so far, it has already made a monumental impact for the better."
On average, a travel nurse will be assigned to one particular location for about 13 weeks before moving on, which can make the position difficult for those with families or a deep connection to home. For Alex, though, he's not looking back.
"After being a travel nurse, I could never go back to being a regular staff nurse," he said. "I am someone who does not like being tied to one place and prefers to move around. It is hard for me to grow as an individual and as a nurse being in the same unit for years.
"Through travel nursing, I can learn so much more at these new facilities, treating new diseases every day. The flexibility of this career has been a breath of fresh air."
In the past, Alex said he struggled to get time off requests approved and felt both overworked and underpaid — a sentiment reflected in the comment section of his video, where users say his stationed salary was too little for the work of someone saving lives.
Besides the pay, Alex said that the pros to travel nursing include the freedom to take time off between contracts, the ability to sign up for contracts within a state, and having the opportunity to travel the country.
Though the process of becoming a travel nurse is relatively simple, with the main requirement being two years of previous work experience as an RN, there are cons to the position, including personal factors such as homesickness or having to maintain long-distance friendships, and a lack of benefits.
On the political and economic spectrum, hospitals are experiencing turbulent staffing as well as harsh feelings from stationed staff who make less than their travel nurse colleagues, despite doing the same work.
Hospitals are even asking that the Biden administration lower the cost of travel nurses as their pricing appears to surge, but travel nurses say the pay is one of the only things keeping them from quitting altogether.
These pros and cons, as well as potentially unconsidered ins and outs of being a travel nurse, are exactly what inspire Alex to share his story on TikTok. "Getting true transparency on the important details about a person’s job can be difficult," he said. "When I was 17, I asked a friend who was a nurse about her pay and job duties of her work, but I would only get these very vague responses. I would go onto social media and watch videos of people talking about their career, but hit the same issue of this wall of vagueness."
"People generally are very private and do not like to share what they do, especially specific numbers of their salary. This is fair for anyone’s privacy, and no one should feel bad about not sharing this. However, I know people out their struggle to find the level of transparency that I was looking for, so I decided to be that for them," he concluded. "When someone watches a video of a nurse on social talking about their pay, they do not want to watch them pull up some metrics off Google. My TikTok that I posted of my salary reached almost 3 million views in 24 hours, so I know there is an audience for this, and my video has helped people."
