As a healthcare professional, there are many reasons to start looking for allied health travel jobs. Being an allied health traveler offers many advantages over permanent staff positions. In this article, you’ll learn some of the many reasons to consider becoming a traveler. We’ll also discuss important tips for how to become a travel allied health professional.
What Are Allied Health Travel Jobs?
If you’re not sure what allied health travel jobs are, they are basically short-term contracts to help fill staffing gaps in facilities across the country. There may be many reasons why a facility may need an allied health professional to travel to their facility and work there temporarily.
For instance, it’s common for healthcare facilities to have staffing gaps due to terminations, resignations, and unexpected leave. It’s also common to need allied healthcare travelers due to sudden increases in sickness (such as flu season) or increases in local population (such as tourist season).
Typically, allied health travel jobs last about 13 weeks, but they can be shorter or longer. Additionally, professionals can often extend their assignments if they wish and stay on longer than the original contract.
Most allied health travelers take assignments in places away from home. Therefore, they are typically eligible for housing, which we provide, or a tax-free housing stipend if they prefer to find their own housing for the duration of their assignment.
Once your assignment is over, then you can choose to take some time off or head straight to your next assignment.
Allied Health Travel Jobs for Practically All Fields
As you know, allied health encompasses many different professionals in a variety of fields, including respiratory therapists, rehabilitation professionals, and technologists for surgery, medical labs, and radiology. Therefore, you might be wondering if there are allied health travel jobs available for your specialty.
The good news is that there’s demand for travelers in practically every allied health field. There’s a huge need in many parts of the country for all types of medical professionals. Therefore, your recruiter can likely help you find travel allied healthcare jobs if you’re ready to start traveling, no matter your field of practice.
Why Look for Allied Health Travel Jobs?
There are many reasons to consider a career as a travel allied health professional. Compared to permanent staff positions, there are a lot of perks that come with being a traveler, including:
Higher Pay
Allied health encompasses many different specialties, which affect the average salary. According to ZipRecruiter, the average yearly salary for allied health professionals is $66,828. However, travelers can make significantly more than this, sometimes even double what staff professionals make.
There are several reasons for this. First, demand is high for qualified travelers to fill in for staffing gaps. Also, travelers also often receive tax-free stipends for travel-related expenses like housing. Total pay and benefits are incredibly competitive as a traveler, so most pros make a lot more by traveling instead of taking permanent positions. For instance, ZipRecruiter data also showed that the top five most paying allied health jobs were all travel positions.
Travel Across the Country Taking Allied Health Travel Jobs
Another common reason professionals are pursuing allied health travel jobs is because of the ability to travel anywhere in the country. Since demand is high for medical professionals across the nation, many travelers can find assignments in states and cities they’ve always wanted to visit. So, whether you want to hike the rockies or relax at the beach on your days off, there’s likely an assignment available for you to help pursue your dreams of traveling and still provide quality care to patients in need.
Greater Flexibility and Control for Your Career
Also, many people love the extra control they have on their career when they become an allied health traveler. As a traveler, you’re in charge of what assignments you take. Whatever your goals, you can choose assignments that help further them and ignore ones that don’t. This means you don’t have to take an assignment in a place you don’t want to go or take assignments with compensation packages you don’t like. You also control whether and how much time you take off in between assignments. Therefore, there’s a lot more flexibility as a traveler.
How to Find Allied Health Travel Jobs
Now you know the many benefits of becoming an allied healthcare traveler, the next question you may have is how to start finding allied health travel jobs. There are several things you need to know in order to become a traveler, including:
Work with the Right Medical Staffing Agency
One thing to understand is that the medical staffing agency you choose to work with has a big impact on your experience. The agency is the one who maintains relationships with facilities who need travelers, so different agencies have access to different opportunities. For quality assignments, you want to choose an agency with a good reputation in the industry and with experience matching allied health travelers with the right assignments.
In addition, the agency you choose also influences how much support you receive as a traveler. For instance, many agencies make you find your own housing, but our team gives you the choice between provided housing, which is private and fully-furnished near your assignment location, or in finding your own and taking a tax-free housing stipend instead. Another great example is credentialing. Making sure you have all the necessary licensing, certifications, and other credentials is important for your assignment. Lower quality agencies leave this up to the professional, but we have a credentialing team to help you through this process. We’re here to make things as easy as possible to ensure you have an amazing experience.
Make Sure Your Credentials are In Order for Allied Healthcare Jobs
We mentioned credentials in the last section, but let’s talk about them in more depth. Before you can take any allied health travel jobs, you need to have the right credentials. This varies based on your field and the location. However, in most cases this means having a valid license to practice in the state you’re going to. The facility may also require certain extra certifications depending on the assignment.
So, you also want to make sure you have all your credentials in order before you become a traveler. If you’re still in school, that means finishing your degree and gaining your license. From there, our credentialing specialists can help you get the credentials necessary for the assignments you choose.
Get Some Experience Practicing in Your Field
In addition, you will also need to get some experience before you start taking allied health travel jobs. Working for a year or two in a permanent position can help you really understand your role and also demonstrate your clinical skills. Since travelers have to adapt quickly to a wide variety of environments in facilities across the nation, it helps to have some experience under your belt first.
Top Quality Allied Health Travel Jobs from AHS MedStat
Our team at AHS MedStat is here to make traveling easy for allied health professionals. We work with you to find the right assignments for you and your goals. Our recruiters are some of the best in the country and offer the ongoing support you need. For a medical staffing agency that really cares about you, contact our team today. Get started by browsing our allied health job board or reaching out to one of our recruiters!
