Working as a travel nurse involves some major trade-offs, sacrificing a pension and paid sick days for flexibility as a “private contractor,” says a nurse from Edmonton who worked for several agencies in Halifax after experiencing pandemic burnout in 2022.

The nurse, referred to pseudonymously as Steven to shield him from professional retribution, told the Progress Report that his decision to become a contract nurse had nothing to do with difficulty finding a job, which “were quite abundant” in the days after the height of Covid-19. 

“I just needed a change,” he said, adding that he heard about travel nursing opportunities “through word of mouth,” and began applying to multiple agencies. 

Steven described the experience of being a travel nurse as “touch and go.” Relationships with staff nurses vary from job site to job site. 

But one constant is the steep learning curve, since your time at each assignment is limited to the terms of your contract. 

 “It feels fairly similar to when you would start a new job, except the fact that it's a very fast track, so you're expected to learn their system quite quickly,” said Steven. 

For this reason, he says he would only recommend travel nursing to nurses who already have “an abundance of experience.”

“The expectations of orientation are probably one to two shifts, and then they're basically on your own,” said Steven.

While there are “certain moments” when the agencies he’s worked for have been “not so good at communication,” the overall “support has been quite decent.” 

Agencies, generally speaking, are easy to get in touch with, provide their contractors with housing wherever they go, clear instructions and site management’s contact information. 

“But at the end, on the other side of that, as a travel nurse you have to do a little bit of your own homework as, in terms of what to expect and where to go, what the unit cultures are and whatnot,” said Steven, who works for three agencies currently. 

He added that he’s done repeat contracts in the same unit because of the rapport he’s established with management. 

While he appreciates the flexibility of working for multiple employers, Steven acknowledged that "being on the road and doing these contracts for several months of the year is definitely wearing thin."

"This is definitely not a sustainable way of living," he said. 

Account ‘closely resonates’ with report findings: prof

Joan Almost is an expert in nursing at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont., who wrote a September 2024 report for the Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions on agency nursing.

She told the Report that Steven’s account “closely resonates with what we heard during our survey and interviews with nurses working with agencies.”

“The most commonly reported reasons for working with agencies include better pay, work-life balance, control over schedule, more flexible hours, and better working conditions,” Almost wrote in an email. 

Other advantages identified in the report included “flexibility in choosing schedules, having new experiences, and different opportunities as well as similar disadvantages including uncertainty of where they were working, isolation and not having benefits such as pensions,” she added.

She identified a “key concern” with agency nursing as the “constant turnover within the healthcare team, and how this impacts the continuity of patient care due to the lack of familiarity with the practice area, patients, and policies.”

“Agency nurses come in and earn double our wages… and we cannot advocate for ourselves”

Back in Edmonton, a staff nurse at one of the city’s largest hospitals, referred to pseudonymously as Rebecca, told the Report that “morale on the unit is strained when it comes to working with travel nurses.”

She emphasized that agency nurses “are all wonderful people to work with, but there are a few dividing factors” impacting unit morale. 

“The first and foremost is the wage gap,” said Rebecca, adding that the current collective agreement between United Nurses of Alberta and Alberta Health Services (AHS) was negotiated in the context of the pandemic, which constrained the union’s ability to secure the best deal possible for members. 

“Then agency nurses come in and earn double our wages, plus paid accommodations, travel, meals, etc. and we cannot advocate for ourselves a better wage.”

Rebecca added that staff nurses have a “superficial relationship” with their travelling counterparts, since the temporary nurses “are not invested in the unit.” 

“They are there for a short period only, always one foot out the door.  They tend to keep to themselves and the unit staff keep to themselves,” she said. 

Given the brief duration of travel nurses’ contracts, which this outlet previously reported can be as short as three weeks, Rebecca said they’re often given “easier patient assignments,” which creates a “work divide” that many staff nurses resent. 

Still, Rebecca said that if she didn’t have young children to care for in Edmonton, she could see herself becoming a travel nurse, citing how poorly AHS treats its employees and management’s resistance to change. 

“If my personal circumstances were different,” she said, “I would travel to a location who saw my value and paid me accordingly.” 

Progress Alberta’s ongoing series investigating Alberta’s use of private staffing agency nurses is made possible in part by a grant from the United Nurses of Alberta, a labour union representing registered nurses in Alberta. The Progress Report maintains editorial independence throughout the investigation and reporting process.