Travel nurse tax time is here. Are your records in order? This year the deadline for filing taxes is April 16, 2012.* You can file taxes yourself using IRS e-file or hire a tax professional to file for you. Either way, the faster you file, the quicker you cash in on whatever refund you may have coming.  Take a moment to read five travel nurse tax tips. These will make filing taxes at the end of the year a breeze and help you get the most from your return. The 5 Travel Nurse Tax Tips 1. Track Expenses Most handheld mobile devices come with some type of app that allows you to keep track of daily expenses.  You can also use good old fashion pencil and paper or a pocketsize ledger book. Good records will enable you to easily match expenses with receipts, helping you file accurately. 2. Keep Receipts Save all receipts for dining, uniforms, fuel, utilities and other expenses related to travel nursing. In short, save every receipt for every exception you plan to claim. Either scan these receipts electronically or store them in a recipe box for safe keeping.  If you’re subject [+]

As much fun as Social Media has become, it can ruin your nurse career if you’re not careful. By following a few simple rules when conversing in online nurse forums and posting on Facebook, Twitter and others, nurses can freely enjoy Social Media and avoid common pitfalls that lead to conflict. Don’t post personal information. Outside of a basic online Profiles nurses use to network with employers, it is best to remain anonymous when participating in cyber discussion groups and posting on public and private Internet sites.  Anonymity can be effectively accomplished by utilizing avatars and clever pen names. Avoid using your real name (including just your first name) or actual thumbnail photos of you. Don’t post pictures or names of patients. Adhering to patient privacy and disclosure laws as mandated by state and federal governments (HIPPA) is paramount to avoiding conflict and liability as a nurse on the Internet. Avoid posting information that can potentially reveal who a patient is or where they’re being treated.  When sharing clinical information and experiences with others on the Internet; be sure not to refer to “a patient,� “the patient,� or “patient x.� In [+]

FREE CEU Course for Working Travel Nurses Helps Keep RNs Safe in Cyberspace Social Media is a lot of fun. It’s ideal for sharing photos and stories with family and friends and in the travel nursing world has become invaluable in journaling exploits and networking professionally.  But caution is to be had for nurses engaging Social Media, especially in nurse jobs search and communicating in online forums. To help working nurses maximize the use of Social Media while protecting themselves from getting stuck in a permanent nurse cyber-rut, American Traveler benefits include FREE CEU Courses. Topics include Social Networking; Putting Your Best Post Forward, plus many more educational topics of professional importance. The goal of the course is to inform nurses about the impact social networking has on their professional image and careers. With more healthcare employers searching Social Media websites everyday for potential candidates, the last thing any nurse needs is to be found unintentionally violating patient privacy or posting controversial comments or pictures on a Facebook page. Even if a nurse deletes or edits compromising Internet content, it’s typically already cached on a server somewhere. By using legitimate channels, employers conducting background checks and the courts can harvest it, experts say. "Taken in [+]

Find Jobs in the Pediatric Specialties! It’s that time of year again! U.S. News & Report has just released its top ranking hospitals for both rehabilitative care and pediatrics—some of the names on this list are our trusted affiliates. American Traveler is proud to have staffed over 75% of the facilities ranked "AMERICA'S BEST HOSPITALS" By U.S. News & World Report.  Our nursing jobs and therapist jobs are offered nationwide and you might just find yourself working in one the America’s best hospitals! Whether or not your workplace appeared in 2011-12 rankings, we congratulate all our R.N.s and therapists on a job well done. It was a banner year for high quality healthcare and we hope we see more of your good work in years to come. To create the 2011-12 rankings, U.S. News surveyed nearly 180 pediatric centers, obtaining clinical data and polling 1,500 doctors in 10 pediatric specialties where they would send the sickest children. In all, 76 hospitals ranked in one or more specialties. Eleven hospitals with high scores in at least four specialties were named to the U.S. News Honor Roll. Registered nurses intent on landing the best PICU jobs in the [+]

Meet Cindy Burbatt, R.N. and her Pets American Traveler had the pleasure of checking in with a new member of our travel nursing staff, Cindy Burbatt, R.N. who shared some of the details of her first travel nurse job in Kansas City, Missouri. We talked with Cindy on the eve of her birthday. She was full of excitement for the road trip planned the following morning, departing from North Carolina en route to the heart of the Midwest. As the mother of three grown children, Cindy decided it was the right time to change up her 16-year background as a permanent staff telemetry/med surge nurse by accepting a travel nurse job in America’s heartland. While the truck she drives may not be anything that unusual for a R.N. moving to Kansas City, one standout detail is the 17ft. long trailer attached. It accommodates her longstanding and beloved pets, George and Ash; these are Cindy’s horses, and during the car trip to Missouri they’ll be staying in farms sprinkled throughout various states—places Cindy found through an online network called Horse Motel. When they arrive in Kansas City, Cindy will take up residence in a townhome, compliments of American Traveler’s private housing arrangement. George [+]

Is your Healthcare Employer joining this year’s Great American Smokeout? It’s catching on as quickly as a smoking habit itself: more hospitals in more states putting an end to hiring registered nurse smokers. So far, Pennsylvania and Georgia, Missouri, Massachusetts, Tennessee and Texas lead the pack. Others are expected to follow. "Hospital administrators say it’s about improving worker productivity, reducing healthcare costs and promoting healthy living," said Clinical Account Manager, Deborah Bacurin for American Traveler Staffing Professionals, a leading provider of Florida nursing jobs.  "We're getting more calls for travel nurse nicotine screens and the buzz nationwide is to expand the practice." In a readers poll conducted by media giant, Tribune Company, more than half of 522 respondents said healthcare employers should ban smoking. Thirty-nine percent answered "no way," it’s a violation of smoker's rights, and five percent were undecided.* Cleveland Clinic director, Paul Turpeluk, told the New York Times** earlier in the year that his organization had received numerous requests in recent months from healthcare employers looking to transit to non-smoking environments. Cleveland Clinic stopped hiring smokers in 2007, pioneering a contagious movement to cut costs and improve employee performance. On average, smokers cost [+]

R.N.s and physical therapists who work for American Traveler take every precaution to avoid the flu. They know their first and best defense is to get a flu shot or nasal spray. Like most top tier staffing agencies, our healthcare professionals must show proof of vaccination once a year, and are glad to provide patients with everything they need to know about protecting themselves during flu season, October through December. Spreading the word about the importance of an annual flu shot means you’re in good company with the Center for Disease Control. The CDC recommends that everyone 6 months-old and up get vaccinated. The 2011-2012 flu strain is identical to last year’s, including the H1N1 virus; that means if you were vaccinated last year, you need only receive 1 shot this go around. Click here to find flu shots near you and be sure to post a comment on our Facebook page when you’ve done your good deed for the day! American Traveler Encourages Flu Prevention Tactics For R.N.s Some controversy has surrounded mandating the flu shot for medical personnel. Interested Registered Nurses can read about this on a related healthcare [+]

Find Out What Happens When They Come to Your Hospital What will nursing education look like in the future? Beginning this fall, The National Simulation Study (NSS) aims to find out. Researchers and volunteer participants spanning 10 different U.S. schools are familiarizing nursing students with SimMan, METIman, and Noelle with Newborn Hal; not actors but high-fidelity mannequins, with chests that rise and fall. Studies find that many nursing students prefer this to the traditional clinical experience of live patients. Just click on the Meet the Sims link to read more about why they appeal to faculty and students alike. In Sim settings, nursing students make decisions and see the results without posing risk to a living person, as well as better predict how the patient will respond to care. The NSS study also revealed that Sim patients allow students to fully take on the role of a nurse, and that faculty like the option of role playing a doctor—or even a member of the patient’s family. If you’re in med/surg nursing jobs you may know why simulation training is catching on like this. Using a med/surg environment as a clinical training site is a challenge, as the number of nursing students the [+]

This November puts med/surg nurses, the largest group of specialty R.N.s, in the spotlight as America celebrates Medical Surgical Nurses Week, November 1-7, 2011. American Traveler’s Med/Surg Nursing Jobs Cover Virtually All Areas of Practice We recognize the high demand for specialized medical talent, and put our recruiting experts to task in working closely with Med/surg nurses and placing them in America’s best hospitals. Here are just a few of the areas where med/surg nurses apply their skills and clinical training every day. AIDS/HIV Asthma Cardiovascular Endocrine disorders Gastrointestinal care Geriatrics Hematology/oncology Infection Military nursing Musculoskeletal disorders Neurological disorders Nutrition Wound care For the R.N. looking for career advancement in specialized work settings that can keep up with a penchant for traveling the country, start your med/surg jobs here. Travel nurse jobs have approximately 30% more total compensation than permanent positions; plus the allure of unlimited CEUs that advance your clinical skills. For a complete list of nursing practice areas in which med/surg nurses are changing lives for the better—or to send an e-card, print a poster for your healthcare facility and learn of other ways to promote this important nationally celebrated week in healthcare, visit AMSN.  There are decorative ribbons for R.N. name badges, ball point pens and [+]

R.N.s Help Spread the Word If you enjoy technology, you’ve often heard “there’s an app for that.� Well, get ready to hear it again. Registered nurses and their female patients will be heartened to know that, now, there’s a free app for tracking the signs and symptoms of ovarian cancer. It is easy to upload, view and work with this app on their smart phone or iPads—just click on the Ovarian Cancer Symptom Diary App to register. Once that’s done, you’ll notice the color of the app’s interface: a tranquil crystal blue; just like the ribbon for National Ovarian Cancer Awareness Month in May, observed by American Traveler every Spring. Like the OC National Alliance, we’re eager to increase awareness on a cancer that has been called “the silent killer�; yet with as many as 21,000 women diagnosed with this disease every year, we cannot afford to be silent, or unknowledgeable. Please take the time to click on our related blogs about healthcare technologies and gadgets, doing their part to increase patient survival rates in the face of ovarian cancer, and wide range of illnesses. R.N.s Will Love this Smart Phone App Because… The stand-out feature on the ovarian cancer app is [+]