Traveling Nurses Cashing In But At What Cost To Them, Health Care Systems?: 'It's Just Not Sustainable'
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- Big bonuses are being offered to nurses, along with top salaries. Hospitals are desperate to fill critical positions taking care of patients.
The opportunity to cash in has some nurses hitting the road, but at what cost to them and the health care system?
The demand for nurses has never been greater.
"I have daily offers, hourly offers on the table," traveling nurse Ivette Palomeque said.
Palomeque is an ICU traveling nurse making $120 an hour. There was a trade-off when she left her job as a staff nurse making $45 an hour.
"You're asking somebody to uproot from whatever they're comfortable with -- leave their families, leave their relationships, leave their personal life," Palomeque said.
The decades-old nursing shortage hit a new crisis level with the pandemic forcing most hospitals to pay big money for traveling or agency nurses.
"The price for an agency nurse is at least three times or up to four times what a permanent nurse would be paid. It's just not sustainable," said John Laskey, Executive Vice President and Chief Human Resources Officer of Temple University Health System.
Executives from Temple Hospital are aggressively recruiting permanent staff nurses, offering signing bonuses of $20,000 for critical care nurses with a salary close to $110,000 a year.
"I don't know that it's ever been more difficult. It's highly competitive, the demand is off the charts across the country," said Angelo Venditti, Executive Vice President of Patient Services and Chief Nurse Executive of Temple University Health System.
Hospitals everywhere are offering all kinds of incentives to nurses, but until those jobs are filled, agency nurses are commanding big money.
"I never would have thought we would be in a pandemic and that the ICU nurse would be literally the prime piece of real estate per se," Palomeque said.
Palomeque has been deployed to several COVID hot spots, including Texas and New York City when the virus was killing hundreds of people a day.
"It was awful, it really was traumatic. I don't think I've had time to recover, I don't think I've had time to process every single thing because I stayed so busy the entire time," Palomeque said.
Thousands of nurses have left the industry, no amount of money being worth the risks and trauma of caring for patients in a pandemic.
"What they have gone through is unimaginable," said New Jersey Health Commissioner Judy Persichilli.
Palomeque was forced to take some time off recently when she tested positive for COVID.
Now she's thinking about taking a longer break, but the money and her career of helping patients remain big enticements.
