By The Gypsy Nurse

December 11, 2016

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How did I get so much stuff? – Ideas to organize Your Travel Nurse Memories

Ideas to Organize your Travel Nurse Memories

If you are like me than you collect mementos, pictures, and other things from your assignments. We’re here to help you find unique ways to organize your Travel Nurse Memories.

After a few contracts you can see the littlest things start to pile up, and we all know we try to pack as lightly as possible in our mobile lifestyle! But, we just can’t seem to stop ourselves from picking up those little mementos that remind us of our assignment.

We asked our Facebook group members, how they remembered each assignment, or location. It was great hearing about all the different ways that our travelers remember where they have been!

  • Marie, Debra and Lori Anne, along with our own Ambassador Patricia buy Pandora charms tocommemorate and remember their adventures!

Michael, Lynn and Nicola like to collect refrigerator magnets from each location! (We think that is a great idea too!)

Travel Nurse Memory Books

We thought a great suggestion to organize memories was to create a book! Not just any book, but a memory book of sorts, which incorporates the pictures from a specific assignment.

A search of the internet for photo books gave us an assortment of sites where you can create your own custom photo book of memories! Create a nice cover, and organize the pages with not only pictures, but also little notes about the picture! What a great idea! With thumb drives (usb drives) or memory cards being so inexpensive now, they are a great way to keep those remaining pictures! Some of our Network members suggested Shutterfly, Mixbook, Snapfish and even Walgreens for economical solutions to creative those custom photo memory books.

T-Shirts

Other great ways to remember an assignment, or location is buy a T-shirt. But, we don’t all like to wear T-shirt and that’s ok. Do something unique and creative with them like turning them into a quilt or making pillows out of them. That is pretty creative!

Beach and Coastal Ideas

If you travel to coastal locations for vacation or work assignments how about collecting some beach sand with some seashells and create a shadow box? Amazon has some great prices on empty shadow boxes that you can really get creative with! Throw in a picture of a pier or sunset that you took (as the background for the box), add the sand across the bottom of the shadow box, and scatter some seashells along your “beach”. Print or hand write a label with the location and date and tada! You have just created a unique piece for your home decor, that also reminds you of your time at that assignment. Shadow boxes can be created for each assignment, not just beach or coastal locations! A great site for suggestions is Etsy, where there all several vendors that will create custom shadow boxes for you.

With so many great ideas on how to store, display or organize memories from all your wonderful #GypsyNurse travels, there is no need to store those things in a box, out of sight. Display them, be proud and share those adventures with your visitors! We bet they are going to be great conversation starters!

We would love to see what you create from your memories! Share them with us by #gypsynurseadventures on Instagram, and follow TheGypsyNurse so you can see everyone’s memories.

By The Gypsy Nurse

June 19, 2012

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Understanding the Nursing Shortage

Everyone has heard that there is a Nursing Shortage.  The nursing shortage provides a never-ending supply of Travel Nurse Assignments.  A continued nursing shortage is primarily a cause of the following factors:

  • The average age of RNs projected to 44.5 years by 2012. Nurses in their 50s are expected to become the largest segment of the nursing workforce, accounting for almost one-quarter of the RN population.
  • According to the July 2001 report, Nursing Workforce: Emerging Nurse Shortages Due to Multiple Factors (GAO-01-944), a serious shortage of nurses is expected in the future as demographic pressures influence both supply and demand. The future demand for nurses is expected to increase dramatically as the baby boomers reach their 60s and beyond.
  • Nursing colleges and universities across the country are struggling to expand enrollment levels to meet the rising demand for nursing care.
  • According to a May 2001 report, Who Will Care for Each of Us?: America’s Coming Health Care Crisis, released by the Nursing Institute at the University of Illinois College of Nursing, the ratio of potential caregivers to the people most likely to need care, the elderly population, will decrease by 40% between 2010 and 2030. Demographic changes may limit access to health care unless the number of nurses and other caregivers grows in proportion to the rising elderly population.
  • In the March-April 2005 issue of Nursing Economics, Dr. Peter Buerhaus and colleagues found that more than 75% of RNs believe the nursing shortage presents a major problem for the quality of their work-life, the quality of patient care, and the number of time nurses can spend with patients. Looking forward, almost all surveyed nurses see the shortage in the future as a catalyst for increasing stress on nurses (98%), lowering patient care quality (93%), and causing nurses to leave the profession (93%).
  • According to a study in the October 2002 Journal of the American Medical Association, nurses reported greater job dissatisfaction and emotional exhaustion when they were responsible for more patients than they can safely care for. Researcher Dr. Linda Aiken concluded that “failure to retain nurses contributes to avoidable patient deaths.”

What are your thoughts on the nursing shortage?  Do you agree with the experts above?