It is a leap of faith, to move from a secure to an insecure environment at the expense of my family and their well being is not worth the hassle yet, once my wife establishes her insurance then the game is on, because I truly believe traveling opens a lot of doors in experience and adventure and will be right up my alley. As far as the instinct goes I feel my gut is telling me to investigate further, I just talked to someone who went with Nightengale and just finished traveling and will pump information from him about traveling in general. There is nothing like first hand information face to face.

Travelling in my eyes, is what I love about nursing, the job is always in demand so what better way to experience the world or country and still do what you do? How many jobs can provide that! but it's just daunting how many companies are into travelling and how various the expereiences range from good to bad.

And the phony blogs show how desperate agencies are and make you wonder if they even care about finding you a good place to work or just want the commision.

how many patients do you have in california?

i never have more than 4 or 5 patients during a shift. that's probably one of the best things about working in CA...they are pretty strict about nurse to patient ratios. i'm sure it's less on other floors, but 5 is the max on my floor.

Well hopefully in the summer I can convince my wife to go to California for maybe a strike assignment, get the kids to the beach, and get some sun and make some decent money, but only after I have some experience/exposure to the last hospital I have not worked at thus far locally. Traveling looks like a blast I hope to experience this soon.

Wow!! Thank you so much for answering my question, thats what I thought, I remember hearing something about a rule in Cali limiting patients to 5 patients bc cali used to have out of control patient to nurse ratios. We don't have that rule in NY and we can have as many as 10 patients once in a while. The usual is like 6-7, but 5 patients it is much easier to handle emergencies and much less stress.

Oh and I also read about Swarzeneger tryhing to change it to 6 patient limit, but I think he should be a nurse for a week and see if he likes it. I doubt he would ever try to do that again.