It’s always so wonderful to see and explore entirely new areas to us. For the adventurous soul, traveling is one of the true pleasures that sustains us. Now just imagine if it was part of your job, to travel to these new places. Such is the life of Haven, Kansas local, Martin Hoskinson. This past week, I conducted an interview with this continental traveler, discussing the ins and outs of his career as a traveling nurse. If you’re anything like me, you’ll find plenty of interesting information on this wonderfully rewarding occupation. Keep reading for more!
Upon talking to Martin, I discovered he’s been working as a traveling nurse for some time now. His last placement was in the heart of the West, smack dab near the 4 corners. Working out of New Mexico, Hoskinson had quite a few culture shocks. For one, “the majority population was Native American”. Apache, Navajo, and more call these regions their native ancestral homes, and the culture is vastly different than that of rural central Kansas. Hoskinson talked about those indigenous populations being some of the nicest people he’s come across and recalls the variances in dwellings, historical sites, and weather patterns. “Coming back to Kansas, I thought I was going to die (from the difference in humidity)”, Hoskinson said, “It’s a whole other climate”. During his time working as an ICU nurse at San Juan Medical Center, Martin worked with many other traveling nurses as well as staff nurses (non-traveling). He explained that traveling nurses typically were more experienced in a variety of afflictions due to their traveling experience. But like in any field, some come in less experienced than they should.
As you can imagine, there are a lot of good benefits to being a traveling nurse. One of them is sightseeing. In the 4 corners, Hoskinson got to see all the cliff dwellings, the natural beauty of New Mexico, and things that don’t exist much in Kansas, like mountains. Furthermore, traveling nurses get paid per diem for food and lodging costs depending on the location. Needless to say, there are great aspects to living as a traveling nurse.
You may be asking yourself, how does one become a traveling nurse? The first step, become a nurse. Just kidding, but there are quite a few steps involved. Martin for one was a nurse at St. Francis for 20 or 25 years as an ICU nurse. Sitting at the top of the pay scale, he decided to become a traveling nurse. First, he had to get an agency that would find these opportunities for him. Hoskinson has 3 agencies that he works with currently that secure him contracts in various locations. Recruiters from each of these agencies look for occupations that suit Martin based on where he wants to go and how good the pay is, etc. Such was the case when looking for his next contract. “I wanted to go to Alaska”, Hoskinson said, but he was told that there weren’t many opportunities available at the moment. So instead he began looking at other northern areas of the contiguous United States. There are many available contracts and they go incredibly fast, so if you find one you like, you have to jump on it immediately.
Overall, life as a traveling nurse is quite interesting and adventurous. It takes a love of travel, the ability to adapt, and a great work ethic to make traveling in the medical field a prosperous career. Martin Hoskinson has certainly done that for himself as he plans to find the next adventure/work experience. For those of you who know Martin for his work with Haven Signs, don’t worry, he will be passing on the business to his son, who will continue to do a wonderful job with the family trade. That’s all for our local spotlight, I hope you enjoyed
learning about this most interesting occupation at least half as much as I did. Last but not least, thank you to all the nurses who continue to work to help the people they do.
