A Travel Nurse is a Registered Nurse who often travels on short-term contracts to help other cities and states with a shortage of healthcare staff. This is a great responsibility, and these travel nursing agencies need to know you are capable before sending you on assignments.

In this case, the best way agencies know your ability to travel and still function as a nurse is to evaluate what skills you possess. These skills will be written on your resume and asked about in interviews before they send you to a new location.

So, what key skills do healthcare workers need from anyone learning how to become a travel nurse? Keep reading as this article goes into detail for job seekers looking for travel nurse jobs.

How to Showcase Your Qualifications on a Resume

Before outlining the skills you’ll need to impress employers at travel nursing agencies, you’ll need to stand out to these managers for travel nursing jobs. Fortunately, the best way is with your resume and how you highlight your qualifications and skills.

To do this, we recommend including your nursing license, which will feature the state(s) where you are licensed and whether you are part of the Nurse Licensure Compact (NLC). These will help them quickly know whether they are fit to move across the country or only within a few stares.

For the experience section, you have to talk about times you were able to adapt to new environments, technologies, protocols, and other factors we mention in this article. Also, highlight any special training related to nursing that you may have, such as ACLS, BLS, or specialized clinical skills.

In addition, your resume needs soft skills that help you work with people, patients, tasks, and the environment better. So, in concise bullet points, list out your skills such as critical thinking, teamwork, adaptability, effective communication, etc.

1. Be a Licensed Nurse

Naturally, to thrive as a nurse on travel jobs, you have to first be an actual nurse. This means having the appropriate educational background and nursing license in your state. If this is already available, ensure to include it in your resume alongside the date of acquiring this license so employers will know you are up-to-date.

Keep in mind that qualifications like RNs, LPNs, and similar nursing qualifications are perfectly eligible to work as travel nurses. However, this may depend on the staffing agency you’re working with, as some may require other qualifications like a BSN.

However, in some cases, nurses whose state is part of the Nurse Licensure Compact (NLC) don’t need multiple licenses to work in different states. This cooperative makes it so that travel nurses can work in their state and outside with one licence.

2. Adaptability

Since you’ll be moving to different locations, travel nurse agencies want to be confident that you can adapt excellently in any condition. This means not having an issue with the city or town you’re in or the healthcare facility, staff, policies, and similar factors.

You will need to change your behavior every time you are sent on travel nursing jobs to accommodate different staff dynamics, charting systems, and health facilities. Also note that this adaptability also means accepting new ideas and practices that come with each assignment.

So, how do you show hiring managers that you have this quality for RN travel jobs? You can use the past experience section to show when, in the past, you adjusted to new environments or systems. Also, mention situations where you had to quickly learn new techniques, software, processes, etc.

3. Excellent Communication

As a traveling nurse, besides being skilled and adaptable, you need to be able to communicate effectively in a friendly and professional manner. This interaction includes patients, hospital staff, physicians, and others.

So, how does effective communication work? Well, it begins with active listening and being aware of people’s body language and facial expressions. You can also pay attention to how people’s tone, volume, and pitch shift while talking, which can help you know the best way to respond.

This awareness is quite important and was evident during the pandemic when travel nurses were brought in to help the growing number of patients. They were tasked with passing information from hospital to hospital such as treatment protocols, vaccine updates, isolation protocols, and more.

4. Critical Thinking Skills

While all nurses are required to be critical thinkers, this demand is higher for travel nurses as they face complex problems on different assignments. Therefore, they have to think on their feet and find solutions since they aren’t in the comfort of their home unit working with people they have known for years.

Considering how hospital protocols differ from assignment to assignment, travel nurses have to use different processes to evaluate a patient and provide appropriate care. So this means quickly figuring out critical patient information like lab values, radiology reports, progress notes, and others.

This critical thinking also pairs with the ability to work under pressure as there will be times when travel nurses have to think quickly and precisely to save a patient’s life. Hiring agencies want to be sure you fit this criteria.

5. Time Management and Organizational Skills

Hiring managers will want to know if you have excellent time management and organizational skills. This is because you’ll need to immediately get used to new routines, patient care procedures, and documentation practices once you reach your new location.

One of the best ways to ensure you can handle the requirements is to have excellent time management and organizational skills. With this, you can properly schedule your personal affairs and effectively keep up with patient care, especially during busy shifts.

You’ll be needed to balance the high workload demands, patient interaction, charting, and other factors. Without these skills, you can quickly become overwhelmed, which will affect your performance and the confidence your agency has in you.

6. Technical Proficiency

It would also help to be proficient in a variety of medical technologies and equipment, especially on critical assignments like travel surgical tech jobs. This is because you will be in a variety of situations, even emergencies, where you may need to rely on this knowledge for a positive outcome.

While you don’t have to be a master at every hospital tech, you should understand how some basic healthcare items work. These include electronic health records (EHR) systems, patient monitoring equipment, or specialized medical devices.

This knowledge can support your adaptability as it shows you can adapt to new tools quickly, making you a valuable asset on assignments.

7. Teamwork and Collaboration

You’re not on travel RN jobs to be the star of the show but a team player who works with everyone to achieve the overall goal. So, you’ll often be paired with a team consisting of doctors, fellow nurses, and support staff, all helping to ensure patients get better.

The best way to show that you work well with other experts is to mention in your experience section times you’ve worked with a team. It should highlight your efforts and how they played a part in improving the patient’s outcome.

Conclusion

In simple words, qualifying to become a travel nurse mostly means already being a qualified nurse but with other soft skills. These soft skills include critical thinking, effective communication, adaptability, teamwork, and time management.

Also note that even those you have these features, you also need to have the desire to travel. Some nurses take travel assignments for the paycheck but become unhappy with moving frequently.

So, try to nail these down in your resume and you will raise your chances of getting travel assignments by a healthcare staffing agency.

Good luck!