If you’re a registered nurse who can travel to the south, there are ample opportunities available to you. Here are the reasons why travel nurses are desperately needed in the southern states.
The American healthcare crisis has caused even more nurse shortages. However, the south seemed to suffer the worst. The south’s high retirement population, coupled with the low vaccination rates and an unhealthy lifestyle, have made it hard for hospitals to lower the curve.
Nurses have experienced a high amount of burnout in places like Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana, leading to several job openings for both novice and experienced health care staff.
Five reasons why nurses are traveling south
If you’re a registered nurse who can travel to the south, there are ample opportunities available to you. Here are the reasons why travel nurses are desperately needed in the southern states.
1. Travel nurses are paid more
No matter where you travel to work, you’re guaranteed to be paid more as a traveling nurse. Even as the COVID crisis starts to wane, nurses are still being paid $8,000 a week or more to fill in for staffing shortages. They also receive benefits, like agency, retention, and referral bonuses.
You can search for nursing jobs in the south by using the right keywords. For example, inputting "Travel Nursing Texas" in Google will populate travel nursing jobs in the Texas area. As long as you’re a nurse who’s traveling into Texas, you’ll receive crisis pay if the shortage continues.
2. Low cost of living
The southern states have a lower cost of living which typically translates to a lower travel nurse pay, but in times of crisis, that won’t apply. Under normal circumstances, travel nurses will bring home $3,000 a week in the south, but as we saw in the last section, you’ll likely make more.
Regardless, a $12,000 a month take-home pay will go much farther in the south than in the north. For example, in South Carolina, a dollar is worth 11 cents more than the national average. In most southern states, you can buy a home for $100,000 less than the US average.
3. High retirement population
While the northeast and southwest contain the highest retirement population in the United States, the south is a retirement magnet. Typically, people who retire to southern states have more cash flow, meaning they can afford to live in care homes or receive quality medical care.
It’s a sad statistic, but it’s true. Unwealthy retirees are less likely to seek medical care, so states with the highest amount of seniors may not call an ambulance. Retirees in the south, however, are going to flood hospitals during a medical crisis because they can afford to do so.
4. The south’s unhealthy lifestyle
The southern states constantly rank among the worst in the US for health. If you live in the south, your average life expectancy drops by almost 10 years. Studies point to high smoking rates, poor education, low access to health care, and subpar water quality as possible culprits.
Even if the pandemic wasn’t in the picture, nurses would still be needed to account for the poor health of southern citizens. Nurses who travel to southern states are literally pulling the country's most vulnerable out of a health care crisis. But, it takes patience to work in the south.
5. Low vaccination rates
During the height of the pandemic, 76% of nurses said that unvaccinated patients had threatened their physical and mental well-being. This widespread abuse has caused several professionals to retire early, quit the profession altogether, or travel elsewhere for work.
Several southern states have a vaccination rate of 50-60%, which has led to more ICU patients and a higher turnover rate. It’s for this reason alone that southern states have had to pay exorbitant high rates for travel nurses, which you can cash in on if you’re willing to move.
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