April 12, 2012: We had our new Cath Lab skills checklist validated by another Nurse Manager today (each one is validated by at least three managers who hire travelers for their department and checklists are updated from their feedback). This NM was a former traveler with 7 years of travel. She made a comment, versions of which we have heard numerous times before, and still worth sharing with our members. She said she wished all the profiles on her desk had such concise skills lists. She is sick of looking at profiles with 6 page skills checklists, and gives the better presented profiles priority. She said ours covered every point needed to get an interview.

The bottom line is that interviewing managers are the end users of our profiles, and a good presentation makes it more likely for us to get that great assignment. If you like our skills checklists, please ask your agency to start using them. They are free for any agency to adopt in part or in whole without license or attribution (although we do not object to publicity of course). The PDFs can be found here (please log in first). There is room for agencies to add their logo or letterhead, and if they prefer editable documents, PanTravelers is happy to supply them. Just drop an email to skills@pantravelers.org

After nursing skills lists are completed, the focus will be on allied health skills checklists. You can read more about the Skills Checklist Initiative here, and sign up to help!

The links to the skills checklists now reside on the Downloads page here. Everything on that page is free to the entire community, however you will need to log in before visiting that page (if you haven't logged in yet today). Basic membership is free and provides access to about 75 percent of PanTravelers articles and the Traveler's Calculator and of course the skills checklists collection. A paid membership level is also available and helps support our mission, giving you complete access to the entire site as well as legal services. Register here.

Jan 3, 2012: Good news for travelers, assignments are finally getting out of the recession lows. Right now, there are more available assignments than there are travelers. Some specialties, particularly allied specialties, are in heavy demand, and pay rates have been steadily going higher over the last 8 months or so. For those considering traveling, and those former travelers who have been weathering the recession in staff positions, this may be a great time to start building a relationship with an agency again.

PanTravelers recommends that you complete your paperwork with several agencies, and see what the market is like for your specialty. For those living from paycheck to paycheck, we recommend finding an assignment with a start date compatible with giving due notice to your current hospital (don't burn your bridges). Over the last few years, most assignments have been ASAP, however in another good sign, jobs with start dates a month or more out have also been increasing.

If possible of course, it is always a good idea to travel with a financial cushion in case of emergencies.

Dec 15,2011: Because of the importance of California to travel nurses, we have left a note at the bottom of this page for some time describing a way to get a license much faster via a modified walk-through technique. Some agencies have also been educating their travel nurses in this technique, with some actually paying for a preliminary round trip flight to Sacramento for the first step of the process: the background check with a Live Scan of their fingerprints in state.

Recently however, even this formerly reliable way to get a California license has been so sketchy that some California hospitals are now requiring proof of current licensure before a traveler profile can be submitted by an agency. This is true of the St Joseph's Health System (which includes the popular traveler hospitals in Eureka, Napa, Santa Rosa, and Apple Valley) which taken together consistently use hundreds of travelers.

The log jam appears to FBI processing of background check requests. This is not limited to California, and as more state boards are utilizing FBI checks, the delays may increase. As far back as 2007, we had reports of Ohio licenses being delayed by FBI processing.

At this point in time, it is difficult for PanTravelers to make a definitive recommendation. Applying for California licensure by a mailed application has the highest variability, ranging from a best case scenario of 2 weeks to sometimes over a year (usually because of other factors such as school transcripts not meeting Board requirements). Getting a Live Scan of fingerprints in California can result in getting a temporary license in as little as 5 days. However, recently it has taken over a month to obtain a temp, because of FBI delays.

At this point, the best thing we can recommend is that you plan in advance. If your dream assignment comes up and you don't have a license already in hand, you may not get it. It appears to be one of those situations nurses will have to live with, but prior knowledge may help avoid a fruitless trip to California with a signed contract and a license that doesn't come through on time.

Nov 8, 2011:  As of October 3, Michigan is now a full participating state in Nursys. Nursys is a centralized service of the National Council of State Boards of Nursing (NCSBN) to validate nursing licenses to member boards. While all US boards are members of this non-profit association and nurses can verify all participating licenses easily when applying for a new license in every state, there are still 8 states holding out from submitting data on their own nurse licenses. If you hold (or have held) a license from California, Kansas, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Alabama, or Georgia; a trip to their website to print a paper form is still necessary (along with an additional fee) to verify that license.

Despite those 8 holdout states, the rise of Nursys over the last 10 years has made life much easier for travel nurses. For a single fee of $30, a traveler can instantly verify every state in which they've ever held a license (excluding those 8 states). Prior to Nursys, times were tough. A nurse had to mail a paper form with a fee (as high as $75 - often requiring a certified check) to each state they held a license and wait for round trip mail to reach the state to which they were applying for a license.

Oct 31, 2011:  Last month healthcare travelers from around the country participated in TMPC 2011, the 4th Annual Travel Medical Professionals Conference , held at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. Participants gave us feedback describing the conference as empowering and informative. They said they got great information to help them move forward in their careers and ended the two day conference with a renewed sense of hope about the profession's future.

Based on feedback from last year's attendees, we made sure we had extra time for socializing built into the agenda during the conference, and most attendees also went out together for food, drink and entertainment every night. There was universal agreement that everyone had a great time! Mark your calendar for next year's event on October 18th and 19th, 2012. It will be another great time in Vegas! Click here to read the TMPC 2011 wrap up and see a few photos from the conference.

Oct 25, 2011:  Just added to our content is our new Pediatrics - PICU - NICU combined skills checklist. And it is a work of art! (if we do say so ourselves). There is now coverage of perhaps over 80 percent of all nurse travelers with our currently completed checklists. We have drafts of PACU and Home Health- Case Management - Long Term Care (combined list) that are currently under construction.

Oct 23, 2011:  Have you ever wondered why the vast majority of articles and content here are written by "Staff" rather than a byline of one person? The reason is because every article is truly a collaborative effort and a work in progress. For example, the recently posted article Failure to complete has been completely revised to make it more readable. All of PanTravelers' content is subject to editing by several people to ensure that it not only makes sense, but that it is accurate as well. We update articles posted as long as three years ago. This is done when we reference them in new articles, and we also depend on members "phoning home" about confusing sections, or catching typos (embarrassing but we are grateful), or adding new information we missed.This is a community effort and since we are an all-volunteer member run association, we depend on feedback from members. Drop us a note with any comments you may have about any Association article or initiative to board@pantravelers.org Thanks!

Oct 9, 2011:  One of the events at the Conference was a well attended round table discussion. This included a frank discussion of industry fall-off rates by the heads of three participating agency heads. Fall-off rates are the number of assignments that fail to complete for all reasons. The average industry rate for all agencies is one out of ten assignments fails to complete. While this number is quoted in several of our existing articles, we decided that this shocking figure deserves its own article discussing how travelers can beat the odds. The good news is that we can beat those odds significantly with some precautions and minor changes in how we operate. The article is aptly named Failure to complete and as usual, this link will remain public for 30 days. After that, members will have to log in to read this article.

Sept 30, 2011:  The 4th annual Travelers Conference is over. By all reports, a good time was had by all participants, with around 50 attendees (not counting pets). We are hoping that Phil will post an update on the happenings with pictures, as soon as he return to his assignment and works off his make-up shifts!

Sept 12, 2011:  Just two weeks left before the 4th annual Travelers Conference at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas! This exciting event will be held September 26 and 27, 2011 at the MGM Grand on the Vegas Strip. This event is FREE for travelers and their families. To register simply email your intention to attend to info@travelersconference.com. This is a great opportunity to decompress and socialize with fellow travelers while earning CEUs. Your costs of attending this conference are tax deductible. The conference website is here.

Sept 12, 2011:  A member just reported getting a very competitive ICU assignment in California using an Association skills checklist today. Of course it was her actual skills that got her the assignment, but we'd like to think it was our checklist that allowed her skills to show through to the interviewing manager! In any case, it is the first reported success using one of our checklists, and congratulations are due to our member, and all those who collaborated on the specialty checklist.

Nevertheless, they are works in progress. Check out your specialty and send your reviews, comments, and suggestions to skills@pantravelers.org

August 23, 2011:  The new skills checklists posted a few days ago are a bit hit! Lots of rave reviews from both travelers and managers. One agency that we know of is adopting them. Flattering, and just what we hoped for. PanTravelers mission is to improve the industry and we would be happy if every agency used better forms that help travelers succeed.

The announcement last week also brought new volunteers for the effort. An OB - GYN - Nursery list is just about ready to post, and the Pediatric - PICU - NICU list is well under way. There have also been some great suggestions to refine the Medical Surgical - Telemetry - ICU list to better represent Oncology skills. Feel free to join the effort with your specialty knowledge.

There are a number of other factors regarding skills checklists you may not have ever considered before, including it becoming a legal document in a patient injury case. Read more here and access our current checklists. More to come in the next few weeks.

August 3,2011:  PanTravelers is again one of the official sponsors of the Travelers Conference in Las Vegas. This free get-together to meet other travelers is coming up very quickly: September 26 and 27, 2011 in the MGM Grand Hotel on the Strip. Phil Light, RN will, as in past years, give an update on PanTravelers work on behalf of travelers, Joseph Smith, AKA as TravelTax, will give one of his popular seminars on tax planning for travelers, and several other interesting speakers will be there including the famous traveler book author Epstein LaRue. If enough travelers sign up to update of BLS/ACLS, that will be available again. Expenses incurred in coming to this conference are deductible as a professional expense! Read more here.

June 28, 2011:  We are always looking for volunteers, the Association wouldn't run at all without them! From joining the board of directors where you can have a direct voice in guiding our direction, to writing an article, or leading a political action, there is lots of room. Have an idea for an article? Let us know: board@pantravelers.org

June 14, 2011:  The History of Travel Nursing has finally been published today, after some significant delays for fact checking. This book supplement covers the travel nurse industry from its founding in 1978 to the present day.

Lots of fun stuff to read: Do you know who "invented" travel nursing? Would you believe there were no written travel contracts? That is was common for recruiters to have to obtain permission from parents to have their young daughters go flying off into the wild blue yonder (with nothing in writing)?

A lot of never before published data was collected for this article, and incorporated into a graph showing the largest agencies since 1978. Also published is a graph of the total number of nurse travelers, and we have utilized this graph and data to update our original 2007 research into total number of travelers.

We hope you have as much fun reading this book supplement as we did collecting it, interviewing many travelers and industry pioneers from the early days of travel nursing. As usual, this new article can be accessed by the public for a full month until it is restricted to the membership.

Like every article on PanTravelers, the History of Travel Nursing is a living document. We welcome additions, revisions, and corrections of fact as they become available from readers.  We would very much like to hear from any of the first travelers from circa 1978 who can contribute first-hand accounts of these first travel assignments. And we are still trying to locate Maureen McGuire. She was the Director of Nursing at Tulane Medical Center in New Orleans in 1978 and was instrumental in getting the travel nurse industry going, and will have some interesting stories to share.  Enjoy the article!

June 12, 2011:  The scrolling news in the header broke for unknown reasons, leaving a lot of gobbly-gook in its wake. You would have only noticed that if you visited in the last couple of days. With the assistance of our original website developer, we decided to just remove it rather than repair it for several reasons. While interesting, it was never that popular; it did require extra computing power (if members used laptops on their lap, it became warmer than usual); and hopefully we have a new site that will go live soon. Apologies to any members who loved that news scroller.

Speaking of our new site (which we have been doing for an embarrassingly long time), another developer has joined our original team. We have high hopes that this new collaboration will bring new energy and momentum to the project. We are told that it is 95% complete. One of the modern features we are most looking forward to is the commenting ability. This blog-like feature will allow immediate comments to be posted to any page, increasing our connection and interactivity with members tremendously. It will allow additional information to be added to all articles, and of course allow pointing to typos and technical glitches such as the broken news scroller.

May 24, 2011:  WARNING - the claims deadline for the Arizona Hospital Association class action lawsuit is only a few days away on June 2, 2011. This lawsuit has already been settled and a 22 million dollar pool established for class members. In general, eligible RN/LPNs will have worked per diem or as travelers in Arizona between 1997 and 2007. Any reasonable evidence showing that you worked there during that period should establish your eligibility and get you a check. You can file online here.

As reported before, allied health travel is still very vigorous having recovered before travel nursing, with many unfilled positions.