10 Essential Travel Nurse Interview Questions

Although COVID-19 hospitalization rates are now stabilized, many hospitals are still facing a nationwide staffing shortage, and the Department of Health and Human Services projects the shortage to last through 2030.

One way that healthcare facilities have compensated for nursing shortages is to increase their hiring of travel nurses. As of 2022, travel nurses accounted for 23% of total nurse labor hours in the U.S. (up from 4% in 2019). These essential employees offer a unique staffing experience for both the employee and the healthcare facility. Let’s review the skill sets a travel nurse should possess and 10 essential travel nurse interview questions to ask in your next interview.

What is the Role of a Travel Nurse?

Travel nurses are registered nurses with a clinical background working in temporary or non-permanent nursing roles outside of their region of origin. They help fill gaps in staffing needs at hospitals and healthcare facilities for short contracted timeframes to assist with local staffing shortages due to unexpected absences, seasonal fluctuations, or planning absences such as surgery recovery or maternity leave. Typical travel nurse assignments last 13 weeks but can range from 4 to 26 weeks on average or longer.

Traveling nurses are usually expected to have one year of recent acute care experience within their specialty/area of focus. A 2022 American Mobile report found the highest requested travel nurse specialties were:

• Emergency room (ER) travel nurses
• Intensive care unit (ICU) travel nurses
• Progressive care unit (PCU) travel nurses
• Telemetry travel nurses
• Labor and delivery (L&D) travel nurses
• Pediatric travel nurses

Candidates interested in becoming a travel nurse often cite wanting to build up experience in diverse facilities, explore/travel the country, or use the temporary experience to test out a location before moving permanently as the main reasons for choosing this career path.

What Skills to Look For in a Travel Nurse?

To be successful as a travel nurse, a candidate should have certain skills or experience, such as:

• Confidence: Coming into a new facility requires a level of confidence and self-assuredness in their skills/training. It helps to find candidates who are comfortable joining new teams and are secure in their abilities.
• Adaptability: Entering a new work setting can be overwhelming as candidates have to learn and adapt to a new facility’s way of operating. It’s beneficial to find open-minded, flexible, and adaptable candidates to the unexpected nature of travel nursing.
• Compassion: Travel nurses often fill in when hospitals desperately need help, so it’s important to find candidates who can jump in quickly and offer compassionate care.
• Critical thinking: Travel nurses aren’t in a location for long, so it’s important to identify candidates who can apply critical thinking to analyze new situations, solve unexpected problems, and make sound decisions quickly.
• Team player/emotional intelligence: Successful travel nurses are able to move from facility to facility seamlessly by bringing a level of emotional intelligence and ability to hop right into the job. This includes communicating clearly with colleagues, fostering relationships with others, collaborating to problem-solve, and taking responsibility.

Travel Nurse Interview Questions

At the beginning of the interview, it’s helpful to ask standard interview questions for nurses to get a sense of the candidate’s background and experience. From there, these strategic questions can help you identify if a candidate is the right fit as a travel nurse:

1. What Has Inspired You To Want To Become a Travel Nurse?

It’s helpful to understand the candidate’s motive for becoming a travel nurse because it can ensure the best placement for their skillset, short-term goals, or future career ambitions. Are they looking to work in a particular unit? Are they motivated by the competitive salary and benefits that come with being a travel nurse, or are they excited to work with diverse teams and patients?

2. What Type of Facility Do You Work Best In?

This question helps the interviewer understand what background experience the candidate has—whether they have worked in previous travel nurse settings or have been a registered nurse in a local facility. Travel nursing assignments can vary greatly based on location, so it’s important to ensure the candidate and the facility are a good match in terms of caseload quantity, local patient population, the density of the surrounding community, and other factors.

3. What Types of Teams Do You Work Best With?

Similarly, it’s important to ensure that the candidate assimilates well with the teams they’re supporting. Asking this question helps the interviewer gauge the team settings that the candidate thrives in and ones that may be less ideal.

4. What Are Your Expectations From The Healthcare Facility You’re Placed At?

In order to have the best success with a travel nurse, facilities should make sure their expectations are aligned with the candidate. Asking this question allows the candidate to detail their expectations—such as job benefits, salary, shifts, roles, and responsibilities—while ensuring the facility is capable of meeting those expectations.

5. What Strengths Do You Bring To The Facilities You Work For?

Finding the right-fit candidate is important since the travel nurse role is temporary. Asking the candidate to outline their strengths helps the interviewer assess if the skills possessed are a good match for open positions within the facility. In addition to listing skills and strengths, the candidate should note any certifications or additional training.

6. What Are Your Coping Strategies When Dealing With a Stressful or Unexpected Situation?

Travel nurses need to be adaptable to new settings, teams, and patient populations. Ideal candidates will anticipate unexpected situations to come up and have tested coping methods for navigating through, such as taking a walk outside, doing a mindfulness exercise, listening to music, or speaking with colleagues.

7. How Do You Navigate Difficult Staff or Patient Personalities In Your Workplace?

Similarly, travel nurses must have healthy ways of dealing with difficult personality types in new healthcare settings. Ask this question so the candidate can share strategies and examples of times they’ve successfully dealt with stressful patients, pushy families, or challenging colleagues.

8. What Do You Do If You Encounter a Task, Technology, or Process That’s Unfamiliar To You?

Travel nurses will inherently encounter unfamiliar processes or situations that require them to ask for assistance. The right candidate will feel comfortable relying on their team or facility resources to solve problems as they arise instead of ignoring them or trying incessantly to fix the problem themselves.

9. Can You Share a Time When You Made An Error On The Job and Describe How You Handled It?

Everyone makes mistakes on the job from time to time, but travel nurses should have the self-confidence and accountability to own up to their actions and handle the situation appropriately. Asking this question allows the candidate to detail a time when they have handled a mistake with grace.

10. What Are Your Long-Term Nursing Goals?

Although most travel nurse contracts only last a short duration, there may be opportunities for long-term employment. Interviewers are encouraged to ask this question to understand if the candidate is interested in evaluating their facility for long-term placement. If so, the travel nurse contract can be used as a chance for the facility to evaluate the candidate and see if they would be a good fit for permanent placement.

Find Your Next Travel Nurse

Finding the right nurse to bring into your facility can be stressful, but asking thoughtful travel nurse interview questions like the ones listed above helps to identify candidates with the right hard and soft skills.

Insight Global is a Joint Commission-certified staffing agency. Reach out for assistance in hiring your next travel nurse.