Life of the Traveling Wife

Hey, friend! In my launch blog post, I told you that We Moved to Tampa, FL and are starting our journey with travel nursing. But what does that mean exactly? I’m sure you have a lot of questions like how does that work, where are we going to live, and what are we doing with our things, etc.? I am going to break down the answer to these main questions you might be asking over the next few weeks AND I will also include what we were up to during our first week of living in Tampa in this post! Let me tell you, we jam packed our first week with sooo many activities, sights, and beaches, of course, but I’ll get to that in a moment. If you have anything in particular you’d like me to touch on in the future about travel nursing or about us, send an email with your questions to lifeofthetravelingwife@gmail.com or comment down below the blog post! I can’t wait to hear from you!

Okay, So How Does Travel Nursing Work?

Nurses join a travel agency that helps match nurses based on their credentials and certifications to find hospitals that have open positions around the country. A tip for future travel nurses- it’s best to make accounts through several agencies that way you can compare and contrast what job listings look like on other agency’s websites, the biggest difference most often is the pay. Some agencies may also have exclusive deals with hospitals and only have some job openings on their website that aren’t listed on others. Not all agencies are the same in this process, but generally speaking this is the outline that applying for travel nursing assignments would follow:

To join, you make an account on an agency’s website by uploading your personal information and work experience, essentially creating a digital resume on their website. In this stage, you will also type in the city or general state you would like to work in, which department of a hospital you work in, and what your preferred schedule would be (i.e. day/night shift, four 8 hour/ three 12 hour shifts, etc.). A list of hospitals will appear showing you a brief overview of the contract the hospital is putting out for the position they need filled. This will include: the location, the start date, the longevity of the assignment (generally 13 week long assignments), how much they are offering to pay for work a week (taxed money), and how much they are willing to give you for housing/food (untaxed money). Once the 13 week assignment is finished nurses will move to their next assignment or if the hospital they are currently working at is still in need, nurses may be given the option to extend their assignment. 

While you are viewing travel assignments on an agency website you can click “like” or “I’m interested” on a job opening, this will notify the travel agency that you are interested in the position. Shortly after clicking you are interested in a job listing a “recruiter” will give you a call. A recruiter in this sense isn’t someone who is trying to attract you to their own agency because as a nurse you are the one who signs up with them first. Instead, they will act as the main middleman between you and a hospital. They will also act as a second set of eyes on their website and notify you of a job listing that matches the specifications you are looking for in a hospital. Soon an interview will be set up. What we experienced for the first job offer was an interview over the phone with pre-recorded questions that Bobby had to answer as a voicemail. (That’s something we had never heard of or experienced before). Then once completed the recruiter would let you know if everything went through and what the hospital’s response is. The offer was officially extended to us, but we turned it down due to overly expensive and scarce housing options related to the hospital being further away from a more predominant city in Florida. Hospitals may also conduct interviews over the phone or accept you right away. Which is how we accepted the second offer that was extended to us! The hospital saw that Bobby’s specifications fit exactly what they needed and extended an offer without needing to do a full interview process.

Outside of the interview, a nurse will not have contact with the hospital until a day or two before an assignment starts because the main recruiter will take care of the nurse’s onboarding process. Through the agency’s website, the recruiter will open up submission tabs for you to upload completed paperwork for them to review. At this stage in the game we learned that there was a middleman for every part of the onboarding process. You had your main recruiter who helped find and secure jobs and other agency employees who reached out to you to complete credentialing, payroll, and housing paperwork.

Once everything is squared away with your travel agency, the next step is orientation and then officially starting your travel assignment! The amount of time you have for orientation can vary. What we experienced was an additional 4 hours of classroom time the day before Bobby started his first shift to go over hospital policies and to receive his badge. Then it’s off to the races! Some hospitals may also assign you to a staff nurse or another travel nurse working at the hospital as part of orientation. This may not always happen, but it can be a great advantage for a new travel nurse on the first day to have someone to show them around and answer any questions. After that a travel nurse is on their own to take care of their share of patients.

Week 1 Adventures

Wow! Our first week… we truly hit the ground running and got in as much as we possibly could before Bobby got into the thick of his shifts. Here’s a little story timeline of what we were up to:

[Feb 25 & 26] Our first night we stayed in a hotel after finishing our drive to Tampa. The next morning we moved into our first apartment in Midtown Tampa! It was an absolutely beautiful modern apartment building full of amazing amenities such as: a salt water pool, gym, yoga studio, CrossFit room, a private courtyard, and a business lounge with a complimentary latte machine. Talk about boujee. I know what you’re thinking, how could they afford this kind of place? And the answer is we couldn’t and can’t. But the reason we were living there is because we were supposed to be in another apartment 20 minutes from this location but it wasn’t ready yet, so our leasing agency put us up in Midtown Tampa for the price we would have been paying for our other unit. This whole area was so cute and we could walk straight out of our building to a small park surrounded by restaurants, a coffee shop, and a newly opened Ben & Jerry’s ice cream store. What we indulged in was some boba tea from Midtown Boba and pizza from Oronzo. While we were eating we bought tickets to see one of my favorite podcasters/authors/writers named Annie F. Downs that night! She was in Tampa doing a live podcast tour of her That Sounds Fun Podcast. It had been several years since I had gotten to see her speak live and it made me so happy that we had an opportunity to go enjoy her and others speak! This particular podcast episode was recorded live with music artist/speaker Carlos Whittaker and comedian Mike Goodwin! It will air in July 2022, so if you listen to AFD’s That Sounds Fun Podcast closely you might even hear Bobby and I in the audience. 😉

[February 27] The following day we walked the length of the Tampa Riverwalk and back, about 5 miles. It was so nice being out in the sun and getting to see the buildings of Tampa, parts of the University of South Florida, eateries, the boats docked along the river, and cruise ships loading up. Then we did some grocery shopping and errand running to get ready for Bobby’s first week at work.

[February 28] Bobby had orientation in the morning until the afternoon. We went for coffee and chatted about what his first week would look like and the weeks to come. Afterwards we got into our golf attire, took our clubs, and went to a driving range to warm up for future golf outings. (And yes, somehow we managed to fit our golf clubs in our cars along with everything else we brought to FL… priorities, am I right?!).

[March 1] The next day we woke up early to pack a cooler, our beach chairs, fold out table and headed to Pass-A-Grille Beach. This was a narrow rocky beach along a street of restaurants and hotels. It was a little bit overcast in the morning, but that didn’t stop people from going to an open concessions building right on the water that served breakfast and morning coffees. The line was so long there that we actually went to an open ice cream/coffee shop to get our morning cup of coffee. We took a walk on the beach, beverages in hand and put our feet into the Gulf Coast for the first time. After a few minutes of strolling we decided to hop back into the car and drive a few more minutes south to Fort De Soto Park. As we were leaving, we passed a riveting Tuesday morning shuffleboard league. Not a single shuffleboard court was left open. It was the cutest thing to see. Then we arrived at Fort De Soto Park. We walked around the fort and learned about its history, which you can check out using this link. While we were looking at one of the mortars we had our first encounter with a reptile in Florida. 😬 About 10 feet from us a snake fell off the ledge of the wall. It made the sound that a wet towel would make hitting the floor. It must have been stunned for a few moments and then it began to slither away. And with that, I began to as well. Then we checked out the gift shop and got a call from our leasing agent that the apartment we were supposed to be moving into still wasn’t ready. So they extended our stay for a second week in Midtown Tampa! Then we grabbed our beach chairs and cooler from the car, walked onto Fort De Soto Beach around noon, and laid out under the sun for a few hours before Bobby had to work a night shift.

[March 2] We went to Ybor City. We definitely recommend that if you go here, you go during the day when this part of town is at its safest. The main street is full of different Cuban eateries, boutiques, and most predominantly bars and cigar stores. In many of the storefront windows employees were hand-rolling cigars right in front of us. This is one way that Ybor sticks to its historic roots which you can read about using this link. It was a pretty warm day so we stopped for ice cream at MayDay while we were there. Then we headed over to the Skate Park of Tampa. This skatepark had two large indoor areas as well as an outside concrete area in the middle. That night we went out to dinner to get pho at Pho 813.

[March 5] We drove to Bayshore Blvd with our bikes and went on a 9 mile bike ride on the longest continuous sidewalk in America, some sources say the world! It was a beautiful ride along the Hillsborough Bay overlooking the water and Tampa’s cityscape while also biking along great estates and mansions. We recommend this area to walk, bike, or rollerblade (which seems to be very popular here). Then after we treated ourselves to boba tea from Boba & Berry. It was the perfect way to wrap up our first week in Tampa.

Let’s Get Connected

As I’ve shared before, SUBSCRIBE down below! It’ll be the best way for me to share with you the details of our journey. AND I would love to hear from you!! Leave a comment. Have questions? Send them to me and I will do my best to incorporate the answers to all your questions in future blog posts! Do you know someone who is looking into travel nursing soon or in the future? This particular blog talks a lot about the beginning stages and onboarding process for travel nursing. So share this info with them! I am so grateful to be able to share this bright new adventure with you! Signing out from the Sunshine State. 🌞🌴

Madison Basile

Long Island, NY> Lynchburg, VA> Pittsburgh, PA> Tampa, FL 🏡