Sorry to hear about your first experience, depending on where you gave your contact info it may have gotten shared, paritcularly if you were actually on a travel nursing service like RNVIP.com or TravelNursingUSA.com, which are good services if you are wanting to apply to a bunch of companies at once, but they could be annoying if you weren’t prepared for it. As far as your questions about travel nursing:

Do all agencies have about the same number of positions?

No, the bigger companies like American Mobile or Cross Country will have more positions, but with their size you may not get the customer service that you would at smaller companies that do not have as many jobs necessarily. But good companies can usually always find good nurses a job in areas they want to go.

Are they all competitively priced?

Yes, most companies pay is basically the same, it is usually just a matter of where it is allocated. Some may load it into “bonuses” but pay less per hour, some may pay more per hour, but not offer as good of housing it really just depends on what you value. The best companies will offer customized or personalized pay packages that let you choose how you want to be paid.

I want to start planning for July and would like some assistance getting introduced to a reputable company. Can you suggest a blog of nurse travelers unaffiliated with a traveling agency?

Some good ones are Highway Hypodermics, TravelNursingCentral, TravelRNGab and the forums on Delphi and UltimateNurse.com are also places where you can find a lot of information on companies. When reading them though remember that nurses can be fiercely loyal to a company and can be overly critical of companies that they may have had a bad experience (rightfully so in many cases, but everyone’s ex[experiences are different), that is why i think sites like Highway Hypodermics and TravelNursingCentral are great because they have very unbiased review systems.

Good luck.

I was interested in finding out more about travel nursing while I was still in nursing school. I looked online and the only way to get more information was to give out contact information. My contact information must have been shared, I was then inundated with voicemails and emails for many months – even after telling the companies I was not a nurse grad yet.

There are so many travel nursing sites. How do I select an agency without repeating history of having my cell phone and email being “blown up”? Do all agencies have about the same number of positions? Are they all competitively priced? I want to start planning for July and would like some assistance getting introduced to a reputable company. Can you suggest a blog of nurse travelers unaffiliated with a traveling agency?