Becker's Clinical Quality & Infection Control

35 NURSING SPOTLIGHT More men are going into nursing: What about travel nursing? By Mackenzie Bean, Jakob Emerson and Marissa Plescia A s the number of male nurses con- tinues to increase nationwide and the major demand for travel nurses keeps growing at a record pace, it stands to reason that more men are going into travel nursing. e problem is that very little data exists to support that assumption. Becker's decided to investigate why men are deciding to enter the travel nursing indus- try, and when data may become available to reveal just how many are making the jump. In the span of four decades, the percentage of male nurses nationwide rose from under 2 percent in 1977 to 9.6 percent in 2018. at number remained consistent through the most recent comprehensive survey on the topic conducted in 2020. As nurses deal with burnout amid the pandemic, the travel nursing industry has exploded, which provides more flexibility and exponentially higher pay — largely due to hospitals' dependence on contract nurses during the national labor shortage. In 2020, travel nursing grew 35 percent, and it is expected to rise another 40 percent in the future, Health Affairs reported in January. Travel nurse wages rose 25 percent in April 2020, at the beginning of the pandemic, ac- cording to Health Affairs. ey can now make between $5,000 and $10,000 a week. So more men are becoming nurses, and travel nursing nationwide is expected to continue its substantial growth — but does that mean more men are becoming travel nurses? e data surrounding the potential trend is foggy. AMN Healthcare, one of the largest healthcare staffing agencies in the country, told Becker's its data on the prevalence of male travel nurses was incomplete. RNnetwork, another large staffing firm, said 60 percent of its travel nurses were female in 2019, 14 per- cent were male and 26 percent did not report a gender. In 2022, 55 percent of the firm's nurses were female, 10 percent were male and 35 percent did not disclose a gender. "One of the challenges is that we do not have much national public data that provides demographic detail on travel nurses, let alone travelers in other occupations," Bianca Frogn- er, PhD, said. Dr. Frogner is a professor at the UW School of Medicine in Seattle. She is also an adjunct professor of health systems and population health and director of the UW Center for Health Workforce Studies. According to Dr Frogner, there is one dataset that could give some insight: the National Sample Survey of Registered Nurses collected by the U.S. Census Bureau. e latest data is from 2018, before the effect of COVID-19 and when there were much fewer travel nurs- es than there are now. e 2018 NSSRN survey asked nurses how they would best describe their employment position and included the option "employed through an employment agency as a traveling nurse." e final report, however, does not include summary statistics of nurses that checked yes Lobbying for 'RaDonda's Law' gains traction in Tennessee By Mackenzie Bean L obbying efforts for legislation to end the criminalization of medical errors are well underway in Tennessee, where former nurse RaDonda Vaught was criminally convicted and sentenced to three years of supervised probation for a fatal medication error she made in 2017. Nurse advocates are working with an attorney and various state medical organizations on the lobbying effort. The legislation, dubbed "RaDonda's Law," would protect healthcare workers from criminal charges for medical errors — as long as they are open and honest about them, according to Tina Vinsant, BSN, a nurse advocate who is involved in the lobbying efforts and helps run the Nurses March for RaDonda's Law Facebook group, which has more than 13,000 members. "It literally incentivizes people to be forthcoming with errors," she told Becker's of the draft legislation, pointing to the potential patient safety consequences of Ms. Vaught's verdict. "I don't want to live in a world where healthcare professionals are afraid to speak up when they make a mistake while doing their job. That's a dangerous world to live in." The Tennessee Hospital Association, Tennessee Medical Association, Tennessee Nurses Association and the Tennessee Pharmacists Association are working together to draft the legislation, which will likely be presented to the Tennessee legislature this fall, according to Ms. Vinsant. "We've received nothing but positive support from all of the legislators that we have spoken with, including Cameron Sexton, who is the speaker of the state of Tennessee House of Representatives," she said. Ms. Vinsant said she and other advocates plan to boost lobbying efforts in other states if legislation is passed in Tennessee. In the meantime, she is encouraging nurses and healthcare professionals nationwide to reach out to their legislators about the criminalization of medical errors. "Let them know that you as a constituent are concerned about this, that this scares you and you want to see something done about it," she said. n

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