Useful Links for Healthcare Travelers
Provided as a service to healthcare travelers everywhere. PanTravelers does not necessarily endorse the information available on these sites.
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Traveler Forums
Traveler Websites
Book Author Sites
Nursing License Resources
Hospital information
Health Insurance
Tax and Financial Resources
Professional Liability Insurance
Housing Resources
Travel Resources
Map Sites
Miscellaneous
- free Wi-Fi hotspots
- frequent flyer and hotel programs
- financial assistance for stranded nurses
Traveler Forums
Travel Nurses & Therapists (TNT)
The largest traveler forum by far. Requires free signup to read and post. Best place to find out about specific agencies and hospitals, and receive/give support and advice about specific traveling issues.
The TNT Recruiting Forum
TNT has a sister forum just for agencies to post specific assignments (a free service and heavily used by travelers and agencies). It is linked from the main TNT forum as well as from many of the other active Delphi forums related to travel nursing.
The above forums are hosted by Delphi, a leading service for discussion forums, with tens of thousands of individual forums on every imaginable subject. This includes a number of special interest healthcare traveler forums, most of which can be found linked in the first link above.
AllNurses
Has over 200 forums in every conceivable nursing topic, from every sub-speciality to news discussions. They even have traveling and per diem forums although not as much traffic as TNT. This would be the place to go to post a specific clinical question. They also have a state by state forum that may be a good place to ask about a specific hospital. Can be fun just to cruise different specialties to see what issues they face. Open to read, free signup to post. They also have some other services such as job search and resume posting, links to the ever popular state nursing board list and the Medline sites (National Institutes of Health). Good nursing news feed.
HealthcareTravelbook
A social network built by travelers for travelers. This is a fast growing new site, built to be fun and useful, and to connect the community of travelers. Forums, blogs, user submitted company reviews and photo sharing among other features.
Traveler Websites
Healthcare Traveler Magazine
Healthcare Traveler Magazine online site. Lots of traveler specific articles going back over 10 years. Tax articles, job search. Linked clinical resources from Mediwire.
The Gypsy Nurse
It's hard to decide which category to place this one in. The Gypsy Nurse is both a traditional traveler website with insightful, entertaining, and frequently updated blogging by the author, plus a rapidly growing traveler-centered social media group with a growing and loyal following - on the website itself and on other social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and Google+. Candy T. - The Gypsy Nurse is demonstrates apparently unbounded energy, and it shows.
Travel Nurse Toolbox
This site has changed from a resource site to Mostly pages of travel related links by CJ Jones, RN, including RV sites. Some original content, notably an online "book" called "How to be a Successful Healthcare Traveler", which is a collection of articles about traveling. Thoroughly updated March 2007.
Travel Nurse Times
Also known as Hobonurse, this is a resource page by Wendy Bisaillon, RN. Lots of useful general information from agency/hospital interview questions, to traveler agency ratings. Has extensive information for Canadian travelers. Note: site is now archived at link above. No recent updates but information supplied is still useful.
UltimateNurse
Commercial resource page by Aaron, RN. Mixed bag of stuff, some worthwhile. A number of broken links. Forums, resume posting, great lists of nursing associations and journals. Free, but sign up required for resume posting or forum posting.
Travel Medical Professionals Conference
The website published by the committee organizing the annual travelers convention. Find information about prior conventions and learn how to register for the next one. Fun! And we'll be there.
Book Author Sites
Highway Hypodermics
Author is Epstein LaRue's. She is making a donation for each book sold to PanTravelers! Has articles about travel nursing for viewing online. Also maintains a popular "Top Ten" list of agencies ranked by benefits provided (from information provided by agencies).
Travel Nurse Insights
Another good book. Author is Barry Padgett. Travels with his RN wife. Good balance of the good side and dark side of travel.
Travel Nurse's Bible
David Morrison, RN has written an excellent book entitled Travel Nurse's Bible (A Guide to Everything on Travel Nursing). It is well written, well edited and covers the full spectrum of travel nursing experience. The author is enthusiastic and his book is entertaining to read.
- Note: this book is now out of print but can still be found used (Amazon). The site has been taken down, however an archive version can still be accessed (click on title) to learn more about the book. The author's contact information is there and he may be able to provide copies or more information.
Nursing License Resources
State Board Navigator
This list includes contact information, licensing fees, continuing education requirements, "walk through" availability, compact status, and links to the official board websites.
Nursys
This board sponsored online verification of your existing state licenses is for use when applying for new state licenses. The fee for each new license is $30, no matter how many licenses you need to verify in participating states. Most boards participate and send their licensure data to this central system, the only holdouts as of 1/1/2012 are California, Kansas, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Alabama, and Georgia. Verifying those licenses will require a trip to their website and printing a paper form to fill out for an additional fee.
Despite those 8 states not sending data to Nursys, they will use Nursys to verify the other participating state licenses if you are endorsing into one of those 8 states for licensure by reciprocity.
List of Compact States
This is all the states participating in the compact licensure immediate reciprocity for registered nurses licensed and residing in a compact state. There are currently 24 compact states with no expected additions for 2012.
CEU requirements for all states
This quick reference has the specific requirements, including specific CEU course titles, required for initial licensure and renewal. Some of the same information is also available on PanTravelers Board Resource.
Hospital information
This site has a good profile of every US hospital: size, revenue, website link, address, and a map.
Health Insurance
Sites to shop for high deductible insurance:
eHealthInsurance
Blue Cross / Blue Shield
Golden Rule
Pharmacy Checker
Great site for the best mail order prescription prices. Ranks vendor reliability as well.
The New Health Insurance Solution
This is the best book available on health insurance choices. Written by Paul Zane Pilzer, the link is to the book on Amazon. You can also check it out from most libraries. Full members can also read the Association article on health insurance choices specifically for travelers.
Tax and Financial Resources
Jeffrey Barth, CPA
California based traveler specialist.
Dennis Hicks
Website describing his tax services for travelers.
Dan Kobaly, CPA EA
Dan has a long history of doing traveler's taxes. Informative website. 112 articles in Healthcare Traveler here.
Paul Muret, CPA
His sister is a travel nurse and he sell a traveler's tax guide on his site.
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Rick has a long history of doing traveler's taxes. No website - click on his name above to send him an email. Or call (888) 669-1040
Joseph Smith EA/RRT
A traveling Respiratory Therapist before settling down. Posts helpfully on TNT as TravelTax. Great website with extensive information. 123 articles on Healthcare Traveler here. Disclosure: Joseph is also the Association CFO and a board member.
GSA per diem rates
Clickable map with the IRS regular method rate for per diems.
IRS publication 1542 html pdf
These are tables of the allowable IRS allowable housing stipend and allowable meals and incidentals expenses (M&IE). Please note that the first half of the tables are actually last year's rates. The pdf formatted link is more readable, but does requires downloading with some browsers.
PayCheckCity
Excellent set of calculators for figuring out what your pay and taxes should be. They will help you determine the accuracy of your agency paycheck, especially to find out if taxable items have been properly separated from non-taxable items (often unclear on pay stubs).
Professional Liability Insurance
Nurse's Service Organization (NSO)
CM&F Group
ProLiability (formerly Marsh)
Housing Resources
Classified ads
Craigslist
Free classifieds that are often your best resource for finding short term housing, sublets, roommates, and furniture (often free just for taking it away).
Online newspapers
Links to every local paper that is online. Good for cruising housing classifieds before arrival in a city.
Apartment Complexes
These links help you locate apartment complexes and their websites/property managers. You can find information about general pricing and rules (but call to confirm - rules are sometimes different). Some sites have user reviews and the last link is nothing but reviews.
Apartments.com
Apartmentguide.com
Move.com
Apartment Ratings
Find a roommate
Craigslist
The most common way to find a roommate in many cities. Free.
The following require a fee in practice. The first link has the most resources.
Roommates.com
RoommateClick.com
Below are both well established sites that are especially useful for short stays of just a day or two while en route or looking for more suitable housing. But some travelers do find assignment length housing on them similar to the sublet sites below.
AirBnB
Couchsurfing.com
Sublet sites
Some travelers have found housing from these sites, generally pricey though.
Sublet.com
Vacation home rentals by owner
AlltheRooms.com
This site aggregates the listings from AirBnB, VRBO, Flipkey, and Homeaway.
Medical Travel Housing Specialists
Many travel companies are sourcing their housing through these third party sites. Travelers can use them directly for turn key housing (furniture and utilities included, housewares optional).
Med Temp Housing
Travelers Haven
Furnished Finders
Extended Stay Hotels
Too many to list, we recommend using Google to search "location" plus "extended stay hotel" for local extended stays.
Tips:
- Ask for in-house manager to negotiate rate for longer stays.
- Always check the chain's national number for rates and ask for deals. Specifically, Extended Stay America has a plan only available via the national number called Extended Stay Plus and will offer you a rate lower than the local manager can quote. The general rule however is that the manager can often do better than the national number quote.
- Many localities waive hotel taxes if the stay is longer than 30 days. Be sure to ask if there is a difference between booking 30 days and 31 days.
RV forums/clubs
All forums are free: look for sub-forums titled Working on the Road or Fulltimers for the most pertinent posts to start exploring this option.
Escapees RV.net iRV2
Travel Agency Services
Meta-search sites (aggregate fares from many sources).
These do not sell tickets, but send you directly to the airline or consolidator site after you have found the best price and time.
Kayak
Still the most popular and includes a baggage fee calculator to find the true cost.
Fly
Includes international consolidator prices (often lower than regular tickets). Searches Travelocity, Hotwire and Priceline on one screen without having to open multiple windows and toggle back and forth.
Momondo
Includes international consolidator prices (often lower than regular tickets). Also includes discount airlines such as Southwest that you will not find on traditional travel sites, especially overseas. It has intelligent web crawlers that search airline and consolidator sites.
Bing Travel
Includes a fare predictor that may suggest waiting to buy your ticket if the fare is probably headed down.
"Standard" travel sites
Travelocity
Orbitz
Expedia
Cheapflights
Cheap Tickets
Priceline
Travelzoo
Last Minute
Map Sites
MapQuest
Google Maps
Miscellaneous
Wi-Fi Free Hot Spots
A good resource to find free internet access for your wireless enabled laptop
Flyertalk
This site has forums to discuss different frequent flyer and lodging programs.
Wikipedia
Online user edited encyclopedia.
Financial Aid if stranded away from home
Travelers Aid International for all travelers. This organization has historically helped all travelers in need with a 150 year history. Consider supporting them when you can via joining, contributions, or volunteering.
Nurses House for nurses in need. Nurses House is a nurse-managed, non-profit organization with a mission to provide short term financial assistance to nurses in need as a result of illness, injury, or disability. They may be able to help you if you are stranded. You can also support their mission when you can with a tax deductible contribution.