Dialysis Technician Thrives in the Great White North
By Julie Benn, contributor
He likes his job, he likes his location—all in all, dialysis technician Terry Hoffmaster is a pretty satisfied travel health care professional—even when he is buried under 10 feet of snow.
Hoffmaster, 32, has been a dialysis technician for 10 years and a traveling health care professional for seven of those years, working for leading health care staffing agency NursesRx. Currently he is in Fairbanks, Alaska, up close to glaciers and the Northern Lights. This, despite the cold weather, long days and long nights, is his favorite place to be. “It’s laid back here, and the wilderness is all around. I’m able to really get in touch with my surroundings,” he said.
Recently, Hoffmaster did just that. He drove six hours to the upper part of Alaska and actually “witnessed history in the making.” He saw the last active tide water going through the glaciers in Valdez. “Ice is falling off, and once it recedes to land, that’s it,” he said. Surrounded by the beauty of the Columbia Glacier, eagles, puffins and sea otters, Hoffmaster had plenty of opportunities to not only get in touch with his surroundings, but to also capture them in stunning photographs.
“Photography is a huge hobby of mine,” Hoffmaster said, adding that he would like to be a professional photographer once he settles down, but right now he’s an enthusiastic traveler with a camera.
Hoffmaster’s career path started when he earned an EMT certificate and volunteered in his home state of Pennsylvania. When he moved to Virginia Beach, his EMT certification transferred and he got a job driving a medical transport van to take patients back and forth for their dialysis treatments. It just so happened that the dialysis department was hiring and his certification was enough to get him in the door. His training was on-the-job, and he hasn’t looked back since. “It was amazing that the simple little EMT class I did as a volunteer ended up becoming my career.”
Then one day he was paging through Dialysis and Transplantation magazine and saw an ad for travel company Nurses Rx. It looked like an awesome opportunity to me, so I researched it—to make sure it wasn’t too good to be true—and it all added up,” Hoffmaster said.
And travel he did, logging time and miles in North Carolina, Florida, Minnesota, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Colorado and Alaska.
Besides the snow and 60 degrees below zero temperatures, Alaska comes with more than a few challenges. Half of the year it is completely daylight, and the other half is darkness. June 21 is the longest day of the year, with virtually 24 hours of sunlight. Hoffmaster said there are Longest Day celebrations that consist of ball games being played at 2 a.m.
“It was a good month before I got used to the constant daylight,” he said. “I was averaging about 45 minutes of sleep. The birds didn’t stop chirping.” He said he did finally get used to it, and, like many of the locals, put foil in his windows to darken it up.
During the months it goes dark all but three hours of the day, Hoffmaster said he had an easier time adjusting, and even in all the constant nightfall, he didn’t get depressed.
As for where he goes next, Hoffmaster said that’s unknown. “It just depends on where I get an assignment. I actually thrive on change and don’t fight against it. That’s important in this business.” He said it’s a “thrill” not knowing where he is going next, and because of this attitude, Hoffmaster feels he can say—even at his young age—that what he has experienced in life is already a lot more than other people will experience in a lifetime.
© 2005. AMN Healthcare, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
