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Quick links to popular pages: (log in first!) State Nursing Boards Traveler's Calculator PBDS information Tax Home How to negotiate a travel contract Contract FAQs Overtime rate negotiation Tax Advantage FAQs Itinerant! Large agencies
Current news- May 9, 2013: Dialysis RN/LPN and technician skills checklists uploaded today to Resources > Downloads. That brings the total up to 26 different nursing and allied specialties. If your agency allows it (many do), using one of PanTravelers skills checklists will improve your chances of getting the assignment you want. Sell it to your agency - agencies are free to adopt our lists as is (there is room for their logo), or just the parts they like (they can also contact us for the source documents for easier modification). PanTravelers one page checklists are much better than the average agency checklists, easier to fill out, a better snapshot of your skills, and easier for the manager to read and interpret.
- May 1, 2013: We had a secret shopper at the California Board of Nursing today (OK, it was Phil), who managed to infiltrate the board and obtain top secret info on the fastest way to endorse into California. Best case scenario is to visit Sacramento in person to do Livescan fingerprints. Visiting the board office afterward with a completed application and license verification can get a temp issued within 24 to 48 hours. Full information at the State Nursing Boards link above. Good going Phil!
April 25, 2013: Skills Checklist Initiative update: 7 new allied health imaging specialties, endoscopy RN, and endoscopy tech were uploaded today in Resources > Downloads ready for printing or download by travelers and agencies (for all members, log in first). This brings our total up to 24 different specialties! All checklists have been vetted by at least two hiring specialty department managers, and are all single page user friendly to travelers and interviewing managers (who matter the most of course). Thanks to everyone who contributed. Every single skills checklist was updated today, and all received an improved rating scale. PanTravelers recommends to all members who saved a previous version on their computer to replace it with the latest. As always, we seek feedback and proofing of these checklists. Right now, we are particularly looking for dialysis, psych, and LTC nurses to help develop great skills checklists for those specialties. Write to us at skills@pantravelers.org
- April 23, 2013: PanTravelers RN state board resource has been substantially updated today. Thanks to everyone who helped! As noted earlier, more and more states are requiring background checks with fingerprints. All compact states have committed to eventually requiring such checks. One state, Maryland, now requires new fingerprints every license renewal, which is likely to become more common in the next 10 years among other states. That might even be good for travelers, if hospitals stop requiring additional background checks. It is good for healthcare. In a conversation with the Maryland board, a significant number of renewing nurses undergoing background checks for the first time had undisclosed criminal convictions.
- April 5, 2013: We are plugging along on our comprehensive update of the Nursing Board resource. As usual, more states are requiring fingerprints with more and more use of LiveScan type devices instead of fingerprint cards. Some states such as Florida are now allowing nurses to do their LiveScan prints in other states. A great tip has come up for everyone who needs to send a fingerprint card to a state such as California (who routinely asks that they be redone causing long delays in licensure) and nurses with indistinct fingerprints:
- Find a LiveScan vendor nearby (a lot of police stations now have them), and take your prints with the LiveScan process. The operator can manually adjust contrast until the image is perfect. Now they can print to a standard card. This has the added bonus of not smudging the way manual ink prints will and is much less likely to be rejected for poor quality.
March 24, 2013: Our groundbreaking and definitive article the History of Travel Nursing has been massaged and some updates added. It was originally researched and written in 2010/2011 and the perspective today has changed from those dark years. It looks like our new site update should be ready this year, and with it the ability to post slide shows. There are some really fun marketing materials from the early days of travel nursing we have been waiting several years to post. We are still plugging away at updating the State Nursing Board resource and that is going online as each state is updated. It takes some work to get the simple information from boards that travelers need. That is, if they even have a site! We had to have the Virgin Islands mail us their application for review as their site (which has always been bad at best) is now offline permanently. - February 12, 2013: Medical Solutions of Omaha has purchased On Assignment of Cincinnati. On Assignment specialized in rapid response assignments and also owned the strike staffing company NurseBridge in Mississippi. While there has been considerable consolidation during the economic downturn, this one is notable in that it creates the third largest agency behind American Mobile and Cross Country with some 1,000 travelers. It is also notable that the founder of American Mobile, Steven Francis, is chairman of the board of Medical Solutions. You can read more about the role Steven Francis had on travel nursing in History of Travel Nursing.
January 22, 2013: It has been a while since we've updated this blog. We want you to know that despite PanTravelers board of directors being very busy professionally and personally, things are still happening behind the scenes nicely. No less than 14 new specialty skills checklists are finished, both nursing and allied, and are awaiting a final committee meeting to go over some global changes to the rating system. The State Nursing Board resource is getting its annual overhaul. This is a big task, taking up some 60 hours of volunteer time on top of small ad lib revisions when travelers report issues throughout the year. It will still be some time until all the small details are updated, but volunteers have already updated all the links, phone numbers, and walk in addresses. It is surprising how often BONs move! It has been running about 4 boards a year since we first published this popular resource. Also in the works is a major update to our popular PBDS resource. Times have changed, and so has PBDS. Travelers need to know how to handle the assignment that requires this unusual test.
- November 26, 2012: Here's a photo of some of the great travelers who attended the 5th Annual Travelers Conference in Las Vegas. PanTravelers sponsors and co-hosts this annual conference as a service to our members and the traveler community at large.
- Nov 6, 2012: No matter which way you might lean politically, election night confirming Barack Obama for another four year term was a huge win for travelers. The reason? The Affordable Care Act, often referred to as Obamacare. Obama's win today ensures full implementation of the ACA in 2014, which means that substantially more Americans will have health insurance. This means more healthcare providers will be needed, and more healthcare travelers.
- Exit interviews from voters today showed that the ACA is becoming increasingly popular: a plurality of Americans now support it fully despite the attempts during the electoral cycle to turn voters against it. We believe as more Americans have healthcare insurance and enjoy benefits from access to healthcare, it will become a baseline expectation. That is a good thing for the health of the country, and continued employment in healthcare.
- Oct 20, 2012: The 5th annual Travelers Conference is over. Highlights include over 200 attendees, with an estimated 30 plus potential travelers with the rest current travelers. Phil Light, RN, the current president of PanTravelers gave an informational speech on what PanTravelers brings to the traveler community. It must have been inspirational as 35 attendees joined PanTravelers as contributing members (paid supporters with full access) including 5 new lifetime members! Also heard there were many other speakers saying nice things about the Association. The skills checklists were also a hit, with several of the agencies in attendance planning on adopting them. Bit by bit, PanTravelers is improving things for all travelers and it is great that agencies are paying attention.
- On a sober footnote, Phil was involved in a serious car accident in California on the way back to his assignment. He is OK, with a cracked rib being the most serious injury. It will take a few days before he is able to post better details of the Conference happenings, and he apologizes in advance for any delays in getting the new members from the Conference up and running. Personal effects including the new member list went to the wrecking yard with his car while Phil had the interesting experience of a personal ambulance ride and four hour ER visit after 25 years as an EMT and then an ER nurse!
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