While many of us complain about a half-hour commute, one nurse has taken commuting to an extraordinary level, traveling over 5,000 miles by air to reach her workplace.
Courtney El Refai resides in Stockholm with her Swedish husband and their two-year-old daughter. However, each month she boards an 11-hour flight to San Francisco to work in a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU).
Originally from the United States, Courtney relocated to Sweden in 2022 but soon found herself missing her nursing profession. After giving birth in early 2023, she and her family temporarily returned to the U.S. before finally settling back in Stockholm in December 2024.
Instead of abandoning her cherished career, the 31-year-old decided to maintain her U.S. job, creating the ultimate long-distance commute.
Since January, she has accumulated over 30,000 miles and spent about $1,500 on flights, yet she believes the investment is entirely justified.
“If I work weekends, I get extra and if I’m training other nurses too, we get paid 25 percent more than normal staff,” she explained. “My work-life balance is so much better now; I’m so far away I don’t feel the urge or obligation to pick up extra shifts.”
Her salary is a significant factor in why this extensive travel makes sense. She works just four eight-hour shifts a month, yet her earnings go much further than they would in Sweden.
“If I worked one 12-hour shift in California, I can pay for one month’s rent here,” El Refai shared.
This arrangement allows Courtney to arrange her shifts consecutively, providing her with up to six weeks off. While in San Francisco, she stays with another nurse for $50 a night, leaving her scrubs and car there for her next visit.
“It feels like a mini vacation flying away to work because I’m flying away from my obligations at home and can catch up with my friends in the U.S.,” she explained.
“The downsides are the time difference; it’s nine hours, and it’s hard to chat with my daughter and being away from my family for 10 days.”
Regarding the pay for similar work in Sweden, she added, “From what I’ve looked at, it’s the high-end of $30 per hour to work as a nurse in Sweden. In the U.S., nurses are paid differently. In the San Francisco Bay Area, they have the highest paid nurses in the country, and we have a nurse’s union which a lot of other countries don’t have.”
For now, Courtney is continuing her distinctive lifestyle, managing long-distance flights, lucrative shifts, and the perks of raising her daughter in Sweden, where daycare and healthcare are nearly free.
“It feels sustainable for quite a while,” she said. “I don’t plan on changing anything anytime soon.”