Ask any nursing recruiter about nursing, and you’ll hear how they are in demand everywhere. Once someone gets a nursing degree and they are a licensed nurse, they have endless job opportunities.
Nurses have to do very little to find work. It’s one of the main reasons people go into nursing, there is very little competition between nurses. The nurse gets to pick who they want to work for, not the other way around. It’s a huge plus for working in the nursing field. You never have to worry about resumes, going on interviews, or many other things that people in different fields have to worry about.
Why Nursing is the Best Profession for Side Hustles!
Another reason that nursing is such a great profession is that you can design your own schedule and work a side hustle.
Most nurses work three days a week. This is especially true if you are a nurse that is working in the hospital setting. The typical hospital setting requires a 3×12 schedule. This is, in layman’s terms, a three day per week schedule of twelve hours a day.
So, for instance, a ICU nurse might work Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from 7am to 7pm. Then they are off Tuesday, Thursday and also have the weekends off like regular people. That’s five days where they are not working!
While some nurses like to relax or spend time with their families, other nurses want to take advantage of these open days to work a side hustle.
What I am going to outline here are some of the best side hustles for Nurses. As any nurse recruiter will tell you, nurses are always looking for a side hustle second job. The pay for nurses is just so lucrative and it’s becoming more and more profitable to work as a nurse that more and more nurses are looking to find a side hustle. In some cities, nurses are quitting their full time staff roles to leave for travel nursing assignments, which has caused investigations into nurses and their extreme pay.
Nursing Side Hustles: More Lucrative Than Ever
What do you think of when you hear “side hustle”? Do you think of DoorDash or uber or some other rideshare service? Maybe you think of a pet sitting service? Or maybe you’re thinking of online tutoring or some other freelance job.
Well, all of them pale when compared to the side hustles available to nurses. There is no side hustle that pays as much as the side hustles available to a nurse.
As a quick note: most nurses are going to want a side hustle. However, they are tough to get for a nurse with a bad reputation. If you’re a nurse who has blown off an interview or no-showed to a job, then you won’t get a per diem assignment from a reputable agency. Per diem roles and side hustles are lucrative and they are highly prized so recruiters only give them to responsible nurses. This is yet another reason to try and act professionally when dealing with recruiters.
The Best Side Hustles for Nurses: With Tips on How To Land Them
Stay Local: Per Diem at Your Regular Spot
The absolute best side hustle for a nurse is to take a per diem role at your regular location. A nurse who works a regular job –either at a hospital, medical clinic, or out patient facility—can always get per diem shifts.
Per diem means “each day” and in basic nurse terms it means that you’re paid for a day’s work. Everyone who is a nurse knows what per diem work is. It’s ad hoc work that nurses can get that has them work the day and get paid for it.
So, here’s an example of a per diem shift:
Jordan is a nurse who works in the Med-Surg unit of a local hospital. She works your typical nurse schedule of three days per week and twelve hours per day. Nurses, as a rule, only work 3 shifts per week.
So, Jordan has four days where she is not working. She can then reach out to the hospital administrator and scheduling manager and then get a per diem shift.
For instance:
Jordan has a regular schedule where she works:
Monday 7am to 7pm
Tuesday 7am to 7pm
Thursday 7am to 7pm
This means she has many options for her per diem work. She could pick up a shift on Wednesday, Friday or on the weekends. And she only has to take this per diem shift once or twice a month, as little as she wants or as much as she wants.
Per diem is the perfect side hustle because it’s the definition of part time. Nurses only work when they want to work. And if they decide to work only one shjft per month, then that’s all they need to work.
Remember, while it might not sound like a lot of extra work for a side hustle, it’s super lucrative. A per diem shift for a nurse is going to net them hundreds of dollars. Nurses, as everyone who works in the nursing field knows, are extremely well paid with rates hitting $120 an hour in many locales.
Vaccination Nation: Everyone Needs a Nurse Now
Even before the current government demand for vaccinations people with a nursing license were able to make good money as a side hustle administering vaccinations.
It’s a super easy job and it’s one that is always open. Walk into any pharmacy and you’ll see a line to sign up for a flu shot or some other vaccination.
Now that the government is incentivizing people to get these shots (paying people with gift cards, for instance, or prohibiting them from working) there is a huge demand for nurses.
Many nurses are able to land a side hustle working in a place like CVS or any drug store. They’ll be able to pick up a side hustle giving vaccines anytime they want. Pharmacies are open 7 days a week and they need nurses to give the shots.
Due to incredibly stringent laws, nurses are medically required to have nurses on hand. They can’t legally administer these government controlled shots without a registered nurse. Medical assistants can do it. Certified Nursing Assistant can’t do it. It needs to be a nurse. And that means they need to hire nurses.
The pharmacies don’t hire nurses full time, they hire a contingent of per diem or part time nurses to work flexible schedules.
Medicaid Enrollment Nurses: Signing People Up
Another amazing side hustle job for nurses is a Medicaid enrollment nurse. These jobs are ever popular as more and more of the country becomes Medicaid eligible. These jobs really took off under Obama and the expansion of Medicaid.
In certain big cities such as New York City, Las Angeles, Las Vegas, Boston, Chicago, Atlanta and other cities, there are huge amounts of the popular that are on Medicaid.
Many of these people are unable to sign up or figure out the process of how to sign up for Medicaid. While many non-profits and government agencies employ case managers to handle this process, there are also openings for nurses to do this sort of work.
The work itself is incredibly simple. It’s basically paperwork. Case mangers often are people who have not even gone to college, so it’s not work that requires a great deal of prior experience. However, nurses too can do this work. Sometimes a company will pay more for a nurse to fill out the paperwork for Medicaid participants because nurses are more experienced dealing with insurance verification and other social welfare related paperwork.
Remember, nursing pays more than any other job in the medical field. So, you can take a case manager role and make money than a regular social worker or case manager, but it still might be less than a regular nursing role in a hospital.
Remote Nursing: Side Hustle Perfection
Ask any nurse what their ideal side hustle job would be and the universal answer will be: remote.
No nurse wants to actually go back to their hospital and do per diem if they don’t have to. Likewise, no nurse wants to really show up and give shots on their day off.
What they all say is that the ideal side hustle is a work from home remote job. These remote nursing jobs are perfect because nurses can do this at home while they are with their family and relaxing.
In fact, as someone who has spoken to countless nurses, the remote nursing side hustle is the only side hustle most nurses want to work.
A nurse can sit comfortably at home and not have to deal with several things:
- The commute to and from work
- Disgruntled patients
- Long, physically demanding work
Case Management: Remote or Office Side
Nurses are also often involved in work called nurse case management. This is a sort of nursing that is not directly involved with skilled nursing. There is no “bedside” work. Nurses who tire of dealing with actual nursing work but still want to work in the nursing field love the case management side hustle.
Nurses who do nurse management do everything from making sure elderly individuals are taking the right medication (the nurse confirms that the elderly person has put the pills their doctor gives them into daily containers), they might case manage children in foster care and make sure they have physical and medical records in the system, they might be case management nurses for any number of non-profits that are responsible for handling individuals in the social welfare system.
The case manager role for a nurse is a very “office” type role. It’s not something that the average nurse is used to handling. There is quite a bit of desk work, emailing, and paperwork. While some nurses love it because it’s easier physically than walking around the floor and checking on patients, rolling obese patients over, and cleaning bodily fluids, it does require drudgery in the form of data entry.
However, in states and cities where there are enormous numbers of people on social welfare benefits there is a constant need for nurses to help establish paperwork. Non-profits in large cities such as Atlanta, Baltimore, Chicago and other metropolitans receive billions each year from the government to pay for nurses and other case managers to enroll people into these programs.
Assessment Nursing: Insurance Review Side Hustle
Many nurses seeking a lucrative side hustle will find the perfect role with assessment nursing. This is a job that is almost always designed for nurses who have full time jobs elsewhere.
The job is perfect for nurses who are looking for a per diem role, or for staff nurses who want a few extra hours a week to make extra cash.
At it’s basic core, assessment nursing is a job where a nurse goes to a person’s home and determines if they are fit to receive government benefits for a variety of reasons.
So, someone who is receiving disability benefits from the government due to any number or reasons, or anyone for that matter who is ill and signed up for Medicaid benefits or other public welfare benefits, will need a nurse to come in and assess their physical well being from time to time to make sure that they are recertified for their public health and financial benefits.
The assessment nurse basically is in charge of making sure that the people who receive government benefits are still under care and in need of receiving benefits.
This sort of side hustle does require the nurse to visit the persons home, as the person who receives health aid and financial aid is not required to visit a government office in person to. So, nurses who are not keen on making home visits might want to think twice about this particular side hustle.
Where Should You Look for a Nursing Side Hustle?
So, now that you know about the different types of side hustles, the next question is where you should look to find them.
Well, the main job search websites are Indeed, Craigslist, Zip Recruiter, and CareerBuilder. Then you have a ton of aggregators and also LinkedIn.
Well, most nurses don’t use LinkedIn because that is a professional networking organization. It’s mainly used for executive and administrative types of roles. Clinical roles are not the strong suit for LinkedIn.
What I would suggest a nurse who is looking for a side hustle do is search on Indeed and the other sites.
Be very careful when applying on a job posting site, however. If you apply for a job that clearly states that they are only seeking full time employees, then you might be burning bridges.
First, you are displaying a level of ignorance and hubris that is undesirable in an employee. If someone applies for a full time role only to tell the person they can’t work full time and want a per diem or part time role, then it tells the employer that you’re not someone to work with.
But worse than that, the person might make a note in a large applicant tracking system and all future recruiters and hiring managers would know that you are not a serious candidate and to never work with you.
If you apply for jobs that specifically call for full time workers and you only will work part time, it might be a reason you aren’t getting called back. In fact I mentioned this in a prior article where i dicuss some of the reasons why a recrutier won’t call you back.
You should only apply to jobs that specifically state that you can work part time.
As far as recruiters go, you will only be given a per diem or part time role if you’ve already established a good relationship with the recruiter. These roles are highly in demand and recruiters will only give them to nurses that they have worked with before.
Remember, nurse recrutiers make money with full time roles, their per diem jobs are not as lucrative so they keep them for people who are already working with them or favoriate nurses that they can count on. They won’t waste these jobs on nurses who are unknowns.
Jennifer Miller- Recruiter and career advisor. Here to share wisdom to help you learn how to work with recrutiers. If you’ve got any questions, feel free to send me a question and I’ll do my best to answer it!
You can also check out some of my writing at Medium here.