Mid Week At Work. Traveling Nurses

Almost all (but not all) of the nurses who attended to my care in my recent hospital stay were traveling nurses.

I'd never heard of traveling nurses until a few years ago when the daughter of some folks I know became a nurse, and opted to be a traveling nurse.  It sounded awful to me, but she was young and unmarried, and well that's about all I knew about it.

More recently, I've become aware of how it's now common, but I had no idea how common.  It predominates at our local hospital.

Even before I was in the hospital, I had become a bit aware of this.  Most recently, just before I went in, I was behind a guy in a grocery store line who was married to a traveling nurse.  He didn't work, and was talking about learning the local fishing spits.

Pretty good gig for him.

One of the nurses in my recent stay, the only male nurse in the recovery area (I had another on the surgical floor) related how he and his family had traveled all over the US in this role, living out of their big trailer. And when I mean all over, I mean all over. And when I say family, I also mean that. He and his wife had a very young child.

So here's an occupation that's an old and long one, nurse, in a new setting.  One that, up until recently, I knew very little about.