What is a Travel Histotechnologist and how are they different from a Travel Nurse?

Okay virtual family, let’s use a little visual imagery. A little something I learned in my Spinning Instructor training. (Yes, I will blog about that too). Close your eyes and imagine you are on the beach. The sun is shining and the temperature is perfect. Whatever perfect means to you. There is a wind blowing on the left side of your face. You hear seagulls off in the distance. Now you hear the ocean waves crashing against the shore. You see two sisters. Twins, laughing and enjoying life as they soak up the sun. They are living the good life. Meet Mary and Melissa. Mary is a Histotechnologist and Melissa is a Nurse and they are both travelers. This is how they spend their morning before work. They both work second shift and they are assigned at the same facility. These ladies know their value in the healthcare industry and they strategically negotiated this dual assignment. 💵✋Let’s get the obvious differences out of the way up front. Nurses provide direct patient care. This could be at the patients bedside, in surgery or in an office. Histotechnologists provide indirect care by preparing microscopic slides for our pathologists to diagnose disease. I just want to stick with the basic definition for the purposes of this particular blog. The bottom line is that they each have unique skills that are both portable and transferable. Skills that were obtained initially from a college or university and then expanded through their work experiences. I always say, I have done the same job for the last 30 years. The only thing that is different really are the four walls in which I do it. 😂 What’s similar with the travelers is that they both get what is called a “pay package” that is documented in a contract. The contracts are typically 13 weeks. I’m told by one recruiter that 13 weeks is the magic number because that’s the shortest duration that most short term apartment leases will be written. Usually anything less than that may mean you will stay in a hotel. The language is very different when one chooses to be an agency travel healthcare provider. There are three main components to your pay. The pay package includes your hourly rate that is taxable and your expenses. The expenses that you get as agency travelers are for your lodging , meals and transportation while on assignment. There is a lodging per diem that is tax free and your meals and incidentals that are also tax free. You can expect what you normally make hourly as a staff member to be similar to what you are making as an agency traveler. What changes are the per diems you get for lodging and your meals and incidentals (M&I). These are typically based on the state and city of your assignment. It is entirely possible to earn $150,000 as a traveling Histotechnologist. The pay package is whatever the market will bear and has to do with supply and demand. Both Histotechnologists and nurses get pay packages, both Histotechnologists and nurses need a place to stay while on assignment and both job classes need to eat. A recruiter will tell you there are a hundred ways to do your packages. So having stellar negotiating skills, knowing a little bit about strategy, doing your homework about the travel industry, and having a good tax attorney and some contract law knowledge will serve you well. Other things you can negotiate are round trip plane tickets, rental cars, paid time off, specialty pay and double pay for all those overtime hours. There you have it. Those are the main differences. In an effort to keep my blogs short, I will end it here. This is about all I can do today as I am writing this on my lunch break. Come back again. I’ll share with you how Mary and Melissa pool their resources which allows one to save all their per diems which could be a savings of $2,000 per week. What could you do with $2,000 of tax free money per week? I bet you could pay some of your debt off and quickly become debt free. I’ll also share with you the difference between an agency traveler and a corporate traveler. Large corporations are hiring their own lab travel teams and sending them coast to coast for special projects.