“I Wasn’t Ready to Retire”—So I Became a Travel Nurse, and I’ve Never Been Happier

"I feel younger now than I did when I was 50," Lora Cheek says. 

After 30+ years on the floor, many nurses would think about slowing down and easing into retirement. But not Lora Cheek. As Lora, 57, RN, SCRN, and AANN Chesapeake Bay Chapter Past President, approached a milestone in her career, instead of stepping back, she decided to press the gas all the way down—and stepped right into a new career as a travel nurse.

"She came home one day and said, 'I'm going to become a travel nurse,'" Cheek's husband, Brian, a former manager for Fieldstone, remembers. "I looked at her with a shocked look on my face and said, 'We have a son, I have a job, we have a house, and we have a dog.'"

But Lora had a plan. She said, "'Dylan's going to college in the fall. You're going to retire, we're going to sell the house, and the dog's coming with us,'" Brian recalls. "And I looked at her like, 'I can't argue with any of that.'"

So he didn't. Instead, the Cheeks followed Lora's plan to a T, selling their house, vehicle, and belongings, packing up, and starting the next phase in their life together: adventuring on the road as a powerhouse travel nurse couple. 

Lifetime Learner

Lora got her start in nursing by attending the associate’s degree nursing program at Howard Community College in Columbia, Maryland. She tells Nurse.org that over 30 years ago, she and her fellow new grad nurses faced a problem that might seem unusual to today's nurses. At that time, there was a surplus of nurses, and the new nurses actually had trouble finding jobs.

As a result, Lora traveled to Baltimore City to work at the University of Maryland's medical center, where she remained for 30 years. Her expansive career at the University of Maryland saw her in many different nursing roles, including: 

• Renal medicine
• Neuro ICU
• A stint as a stroke coordinator
• Interventional radiology

"It's just really a fun field to be in," says Lora of interventional radiology. "You really hone your skills in moderate sedation because many of the procedures that we do, we do with moderate sedation, so you need a good critical care background, which I had from the neuro ICU. So that was super fun."

After about 13 years, Lora felt driven “to learn more stuff," so she moved to the PACU for the last couple of years at the University of Maryland. She loved her time in the PACU, where—because the hospital system is so large—she gained extensive experience in recovering ICU patients as well as floor and outpatients. 

"It gave me a really diverse field of recovering patients," Lora says. "I learned even more in the PACU."

Making the Leap

As a lifelong learner, Lora also realized during her time in the PACU that she could continue to grow and learn in her career as a travel nurse. A few travel nurses planted the seed, assuring Lora that her clear knowledge, skills, and abilities would make her incredibly valuable in travel nursing. Cheeks noted that although none of those travel nurses were her age, they all gave "positive encouragement" while sharing their travel nursing experiences.

Lora debated travel nursing for several years before finally making the leap. "I wasn't ready to retire," she explains. "I definitely would have continued to work because I was only 54, but I was just ready to do something different."

As she reached the cap of her hospital’s nursing pay scale, Lora realized that a change might be mutually beneficial. "I felt that I had given back to the hospital and they had given to me, but we had come to an impasse where I needed to do something different and new, to continue to both expand my knowledge, but also to affordably expand my life," she adds. 

Lora’s husband, Brian, says that while the change was scary initially, travel nursing was an avenue to positive change in the couple’s lives.

"We were kind of in a rut," he admits. "Just doing the same thing over and over again every day. And it was kind of a shock to the system at first, but it's been, it's been exciting. It's been fun."

As an older travel nurse who had also spent her entire career in the same hospital, Lora says that she was "really scared" to leap into travel nursing. But she gave herself a pep talk, similar to one she had given plenty of times to anxious patients. 

"You know what? I'm like, 'I've done a lot of things,'" says Lora. "I like to do things that scare me, because it makes me learn new things and to become effective and to become a better nurse."

"I feel like I'm a learner again, which I'm loving, but I'm adding into my field, my knowledge, my expertise, and I'm allowing myself to continue to grow in expertise as a nurse, right?" she adds. "It is scary, but it's exciting, and it's great learning at the same time."

The Logistics

Of course, completely overhauling their lives to full-time travel nursing life wasn't easy, but Lora and Brian made it work. Today, Brian is what he calls a "Travel Husband Coordinator" or "Life Coordinator." 

He handles and arranges the logistics of Lora's travel nurse assignments and all of life's sundry responsibilities, like:

• Housing
• Purchasing private health insurance
• Finances
• Housework
• Leisure planning
• Meal prep and cooking
• Doggo care

Thanks to Brian, the couple takes the housing voucher and arranges their housing while on assignment, which gives them more flexibility and freedom to experience activities outside of work. 

"Brian, as my travel coordinator husband, really is the only reason we've been as successful as we are with enjoying what we're doing and continuing to do that," Lora says emphatically. 

Today, the Cheeks have a home base in Maryland, where they rent an apartment, and they plan 3-4 travel nursing assignments per year, taking long breaks in between. They've been living the travel nurse life for almost exactly three years and have been enjoying every minute. They coordinate Lora's travel assignments primarily on where they would like to travel next—with her vast nursing background and specialized skills, her nursing experience is always in demand, which helps expand her travel nurse opportunities.

So far, the Cheeks have taken travel nurse assignments in Maryland, Pennsylvania, North Dakota, Alaska, and Washington. They drive to their destinations, planning time between assignments to explore nearby places. This method has also allowed them to visit places like South Dakota, Omaha, Nebraska, Kansas City, St. Louis, Memphis, Asheville, North Carolina, and Canada. 

They've done everything from fishing for halibut in Alaska —"We had like 80 pounds of halibut!" Lora exclaims—to enjoy a picnic lunch in a field full of grizzly bears. "If you just stay calm and follow the guide and stay in single file and then sit on the ground when they're walking around, they're fine with you," Lora explains. "They just ignore you."

The husband and wife duo arrange every trip so that when the assignment is over or during a break in the assignment when Lora has some time off, family or friends can come visit them as well. Their son—who's currently in nursing school hoping to follow in his mother's footsteps—and his girlfriend will come and visit with them wherever they are, or loved ones will come to stay.   

Even outside of their travel nursing trips, the Cheeks make time to travel for their enjoyment, such as traveling to Scotland and Ireland for a cooking class and planning a trip to Wales. 

And on their bucket list to travel next? New England, North/South Carolina, Guam, Colorado, Hawaii, Utah, and New Mexico.

New Experiences, New Energy

While exploring the country is undoubtedly an exciting aspect of travel nursing, Lora also tells Nurse.org that bringing her background and experience to new healthcare settings is personally significant. Transitioning from a large hospital system with over 800 beds to critical access hospitals, some of which have just a few beds, has been an eye-opening experience.

"It's very different, and it's interesting to see and learn the dynamics of those different level hospitals because you have different equipment to work with," she relates. "And it's just really interesting to see how, really in healthcare in general, no matter what setting you're in, people come together to make sure the patient has the best experience possible. And I think that's really important in what we do in healthcare."

Although Lora says most fellow travel nurses she encounters are a good 10 or more years younger than her, she knows she's in the right place. As a bonus, the newfound passion she's found in her life as a travel nurse has reinvigorated her. 

"I'm feeling younger," she gushes. "I'm not feeling as tired sometimes as I was in the previous setting before I started traveling. I just feel that I have more passion. I have more energy now, and I'm more excited, and I'm actually taking better care of myself now than I did when I was at home."

Lora is a big advocate for nurses—especially those with more experience—interested in travel nursing to start by doing their research, talking to other travel nurses ("There are travel nurses everywhere," Lora says), and feeling out a few recruiters to find someone they are comfortable with. For her, the benefits have been enormous, and she's a believer in not letting fear of being "too old" for travel nursing hold anyone back. 

"If you are excited to learn, excited to meet new people, excited to learn how different hospitals operate, then do it," Lora says. "Learning is so incredible. It keeps you young, and it allows you to do what we really want to do, which most of us went into the field for, which is really take excellent care of our patients."

"I was very scared to do this, but don't let the fear hold you back," she adds."If you've been a nurse for a long time, you have a wealth of skills, and you also have growing to do. You can continue to learn in different environments. So take this step."

🤔Nurses, would you try travel nursing after 30 years of hospital nursing? Share why or why not in the comments below!