When the Gig is Up - Emerging Nurse Leader

By Rose O. Sherman, EdD, RN, NEA-BC, FAAN

A nurse leader recently observed that she sees a different mindset in the profession – “I feel like we are witnessing the uberization of nursing. Nursing as we know it has changed. The need to make more money is transcending all other concerns. Worse, you don’t even have to inconvenience yourself to travel anymore – you can get a travel position and never leave home. It is like musical nurses – I lose two critical care staff and nurses from a local hospital accept a travel assignment to work for us.”

Now that COVID numbers are starting to drop nationwide, nurse leaders wonder if the demand for travel nurses will cease and experienced nurses will begin to return to healthcare settings. The current nursing labor costs are unsustainable in most health systems in the future. Leaders now see nurses with as little as six months of experience working in travel roles alongside their experienced nurses who express safety and quality concerns. Teams are falling apart, and engagement is down. One leader recently asked me, “When will the gig be up?.”

I am not sure of the timing of when the gig will be up, but I feel confident that we will see changes in the availability of travel positions (along with contract salaries) very shortly. Reversing the number of travelers used is the top strategic goal of most CNOs that I have interviewed. Interestingly, once the trends begin to shift – it might happen pretty quickly. Nurses who are in these roles may be caught off guard when contracts are not renewed. All they have known is ever-escalating demand.

One of my coaching clients can serve as a cautionary tale. He was in a high-demand specialty area and working as an Interim Assistant Vice President for a large academic medical center in California. His long-term goal was to become a CNO. On our first coaching call, he told me that he had served in this interim role for over two years. He was making a great salary and received housing as part of a contract. He had sold his home in the midwest and put his belongings in storage. He loved living in California. I asked him about his backup plan. He didn’t have one. His department was functioning well, and he had a great relationship with the executive team at the medical center. He assumed this would go on until he made a move to a CNO role. He was stunned when he was notified that the organization had not renewed the contract just two months later. He was given two weeks to move his belongings from the apartment that he lived in.

This nurse leader had built a false sense of security in his gig, never really asking himself what he would do if the gig were up. There are likely many nurses out there on travel assignments who are in this same place – believing it will go on forever. While a nursing shortage will remain long after the COVID crisis is over, the number of travel positions will decline as health system leaders develop other strategies to supplement their core staffing. I am urging nurse leaders to stay connected to valued nurses who have left to travel – many will want and need to come back. It will be much easier to come back if the door has remained open when the gig is up.

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