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A Real Nurse Story: Tracy Melville

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Traveling the country with your friends and getting paid for it—that seductive benefit piqued the interest of Tracy Melville when travel nurses spoke to her nursing-school class. Melville was sold.

Five years into her career as a neonatal ICU nurse, the 26-year-old now has 10 assignments with Cross Country TravCorps under her belt. Despite the high stress in her specialty, she doesn't see herself doing anything else. And she can't think of a better way to do it than as a traveler.

While the trip-taking aspect ranks first in her book, Melville also appreciates such benefits as free health insurance and a 401(k) plan. Free shared housing as a traveler allows her to live beyond her means. "If I lived in Boston on my own, there's no way I could afford to live there. I'd have to commute. But with Cross Country, I lived close enough to work at [Boston's] Mass General."

In discovering different hospitals' approaches to her specialty, Melville enjoys a form of adult continuing education. "My girlfriends and I joke that we're going to take the best points of every neonatal unit and open the perfect unit," she says.

She has learned to cope with the paperwork hassles and six-week wait for some state nursing licenses, along with continually proving herself at new hospitals. Moving every few months also can grow tiresome, but Melville points out that she can always extend her assignments. "And when a traveler gets homesick, she can come back home," says the Pembroke, Mass., resident. "It's nice to have that option."

If she valued pay over places, Melville could earn more, since a traveler's salary is based on the assigned hospital. Choosing the highest-salaried positions, however, could mean that she'd be working in less-desirable locations.

Speaking of location, location, location—that's everything to Melville when choosing travel assignments. Thus far, her assignments have included Newport Beach, Calif.; Denver; Boston; Seattle; and Phoenix. When her family members can get time off, they often fly to meet her at her assignment location. "My sister is like, 'You have to go somewhere good for the summer so I can come visit you!'"

While at Mass General, Melville recruited two women to be travel-nurse companions. The threesome has experienced Anchorage, Alaska, and plan to hit Hawaii next. "This is more than a vacation," Melville says of her job. "You get to live in a city, meet the people, and see how they live."

She cautions that potential travelers must adapt well to new cities and work environments. "And you have to be laid-back. It can be two weeks before your next assignment and you don't know where you're going yet."

For those thinking about relocating, the role of a travel nurse is ideal, Melville says. An assignment lets one try out a city or a hospital. "It's a big commitment to take a position with a hospital and then discover you don't like it," she notes.

Melville isn't sure how far travel nursing will take her, but for now it seems the perfect way to indulge her wanderlust. "It's so addictive because you can go anywhere," she says. "Maybe I'll do it for a couple of years more and then settle down. But I've met some travel nurses who have done this for 15 years. You just never know."