Traveling Nurse at Travel Nurse Across America
Army Reserve captain travels the country as a nurse.
by Warren Duffie
Are you nervous about leaving the military? You’re not alone. After all, what other employer besides Uncle Sam combines good pay, free housing and medical care with challenging assignments spanning all 50 states. 
But don’t worry. If you have a nursing or medical background, you can follow the example of Katie Estep: pursuing a career in the booming travel nursing industry that is almost as generous and enjoyable.
“It’s an ideal career for military veterans,” says Estep, 44, a former U.S. Army private second class and current reserve officer. “If you love to travel, visit new places, and still earn a great living, I don’t recommend anything else.”
She works for Travel Nurse across America, a staffing company that provides temporary nurses to hospitals suffering from staff shortages. The Little Rock, AK.-based firm has hundreds of nurses on its payroll, contracts with 1,000 hospitals nationwide, and showcases what has been praised “as the best benefits package in the industry” — great pay ($24 to $38 per hour), free furnished housing and paid utilities, and free health, dental, and life insurance.
“I love working for Travel Nurse,” Estep says. “You receive wonderful pay and benefits, can choose where and how often you want to work, and you get to travel the country. What more could you ask for?”
Estep, a registered nurse, works in the emergency room at Glades General Hospital, a 73-bed facility in Belle Glade, FL., located in the heart of the large agricultural belt on the southern shores of Lake Okeechobee. With a payroll of nearly 300 employees, Glades General is one of the largest employers in the area.
Estep works from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., Saturday, Monday, Tuesday, and sometimes Wednesdays. Her main duties include “triage” (determining whether a patient needs immediate medical care or can wait for a doctor), inserting IVs, setting splints, and treating patients for trauma. The conditions she sees each day run the gamut from common colds and heart attacks to strokes, kidney failure, or accident-related injuries.
“It varies,” she says. “Sometimes I’ll see one kind of affliction two or three times in a row. Normally, that’s when ‘the rule of three’ kicks in — if you see two back-to-back cases involving one condition, there’s sure to be one more.
“It’s a high-stress environment, but I love it,” she continues. “I’ve met a lot of interesting people, and I really like the hospital staff. I’ve extended my contract here four times now.”
A Way to Heal America’s Nursing Shortage?
Nurses have always been vitally important, sometimes underappreciated, and often overlooked. After all, doctors are usually the focus of our compliments or complaints regarding medical care. However, in recent years a potentially crippling nursing shortage has made these calming individuals the darlings of the healthcare industry. As baby boomers age, require more care, and live longer, nursing schools aren’t producing graduates fast enough. According to a USA Today article, the U.S. government expects the national nursing shortage to hit 800,000 by 2020. In California, where the shortage is especially painful, there are 14,000 open nursing jobs.
But the travel nursing industry offers some hope, bringing the best of both worlds to thinly stretched hospitals with limited access to a skilled, experienced labor pool. Nurses can discover a career that is professionally and personally satisfying and pays well. Travel nurses — some 20,000 nationwide — make about twice as much as hospital staff nurses ($44,000 to $70,000 a year for someone working 40 hours a week for 50 weeks); have free health care and insurance; are able to pick and choose when, how often, and where they want to work; and can switch assignments every few months.
As stated before, Travel Nurse across America pays its nurses $24 to $38 an hour, provides free, furnished housing with utilities paid — a housing subsidy between $900 and $1,900 per month is paid to those providing their own housing — and offers free health, dental, and life insurance.
In addition, nurses can receive bonuses of up to $5,000 after completing an assignment, as well as bonuses for extending their tenures with a hospital. Travel Nurse also offers online continuing education credits, a 401 (k) plan, referral bonuses of up to $500, and loyalty perks (e.g., cash bonuses and paid vacations) for completing 1,300 hours of work.
Assignments last from a month to a year; first-time nurses are advised to take a 13- to 26-week assignment. Normal work weeks are 36 to 40 hours.
From Coal Country to Camouflage
Katie Estep grew up in Paw Paw, KY., a true coal miner’s daughter. With eight children, money was tight in the Estep house, but love and music were plentiful. Each Sunday, the family would gather in the living room to play banjos, fiddles, and guitars and sing well-known gospel and bluegrass tunes. They would also talk about the family’s history, especially how generations of Esteps had served proudly in the military.
(Today, Estep is also an award-winning singer and songwriter, and is known in Central Florida musical circles as Katie Renea. While in the Army, she often wrote cadence and gradually progressed to writing songs. One of her latest songs is titled “She Wears Combat Boots” and is dedicated those serving in the armed forces. More about her musical career can be found at www.katierenea.com.)
When Estep graduated from high school in 1979, she decided to follow in her ancestors’ footsteps and enlist. At that time, coal was no longer king, and job opportunities in Paw Paw were scarce. So Estep visited a local Army recruiter, hoping to become a helicopter pilot, which she thought sounded exciting. However, the recruiter told her helicopter pilots were in a combat field limited only to men. He suggested she pursue meteorology, which involved wind speed, velocity, temperature, elements that are part of pilot training. “I figured meteorology would help down the road if I ever decided to become a civilian pilot [Estep hasn’t ruled that out yet],” she says. “Besides, the Army sounded good to an 18-year-old kid — free training, the G.I. Bill, and all that.”
Estep completed basic training at Fort McClellan, AL, and meteorology school at Fort Hood, Texas. But within a year, pregnant with her son David, she suffered complications and received a medical discharge. Unsure of the demand for civilian meteorologists, Estep decided to pursue nursing.
“It was something I had been interested in for awhile,” she says. “Also, my mother used to tell me that when she was pregnant with me, she was in the hospital for several months, worried I wouldn’t be born. A nurse named Katie took really good care of mom, so I was named after her. So I guess you can say I was born to be a nurse.”
Estep applied for and won a scholarship to the nursing program at a Virginia vocational school, and after a year began work as a licensed practical nurse. Over the next 15 years, she earned degrees in nursing and health care quality management, eventually moving to Central Florida. She also joined the Army Reserves and is now a first lieutenant.
Estep first heard about Travel Nurse across America in 2003, when one of its employees came to work at her hospital in Plantation, FL, an hour away from her current assignment in Belle Glade.
“We became good friends, and he said, ‘Katie, you’re a very good nurse. Why not become a travel nurse?’ ” Estep says. “He told me about the company, and it sounded great.”
Within a year, she applied, was hired, and now can’t imagine “working as a full-time staff nurse for one hospital.”
When asked what advice she could give aspiring travel nurses planning to leave the military, Estep had this to offer:
Be confident. “After going through boot camp, the military teaches you that you can do anything. Bring that same attitude and confidence to your civilian job. As a veteran, you bring a strong discipline and work ethic, and employers know this. You’re in demand, especially if you have a nursing background.”
Use your benefits. “Take advantage of your G.I. Bill. Get all the education and training you can get. I never thought I would be a nurse, but look what I accomplished. You can do the same — just be committed, work hard, and have a game plan.”