Transitioning Back to Perm

One of my good friends worked as a traveling nurse practitioner for 2 years. Eventually she missed home and wanted to move back to Florida. Fortunately, her last locums assignment was flexible allowing her to keep on extending as she searched for a permanent job.

Being a locum tenens nurse practitioner for the past 2 years, she was accustomed to a quick turnaround when applying for jobs. You could find a job, interview, and accept a position in a matter of days. Then you could start your job within a week or so.

Fast forward to searching for a permanent position. This was the complete opposite of working locum tenens. She applied for several jobs, and it took 1-2 months to hear back for an interview. After the interview it took 1-2 months to be given an offer. After accepting the offer, it took ANOTHER 1-2 months before she was able to start working.

My friend noted how crazy the difference was in applying for a locums position vs a permanent position. She states that the permanent job process took forever, for no real reason. It’s not like she had to go through multiple interviews or in front of a board of directors.

The other issue was the huge pay cut she was taking after transitioning from locums to perm. As a traveling nurse practitioner she was making $140,000 per year (including her unpaid time off). Originally the permanent position only offered her $90,000 per year. Considering her amount of experience, I thought the offer was substantially low and recommended my friend negotiate with them. Keeping in mind that Florida is a state that doesn’t pay nurse practitioners well (due to the abundancy of NPs), my friend ultimately was able to get them to go up to $100,000.

Making $100,000 a year is pretty decent but losing $40,000 a year from being a locums is the equivalent to another person’s salary. In addition to making less salary wise, my friend was also going to have more expenses being a permanent employee. She no longer would receive free housing each month. Instead she has to cover the $1500/month it costs to rent out her new place. So that brings her to a total lost of $58,000/year working as a permanent employee.

I understand that being a traveling nurse practitioner forever isn’t realistic for everyone. But I was really interested in watching her transition back to a permanent role. Luckily, my friend is enjoying her new position and the patient load is light. She is happy with the trade off – being back home and close to family, having all of her “things in one place”, and working at a job she likes. After all, money isn’t everything.