There are SO many positions for travel nurses out there in all different fields of nursing, types of facilities, and locations around the country. What do you specifically want in your contracts as a travel nurse? Which criteria do you prioritize when asking your agent to start submitting you to jobs?

what are you looking for in a travel nurse contract?

location

Of course a big factor for many travel nurses is location. Have you always wanted to explore the southwest? We did, so we made it a point to try to get a contract in Arizona. Prioritizing location can look like making a list of your top cities or states you want to visit and working your way down. It can also look like identifying areas where you know cost of living is low, but housing opportunities are high. Or maybe you have friends and family in a specific area and would like to live near them for a while.

No matter how or why you choose to prioritize it, many travel nurses have location as one of the main factors when looking for a travel nurse contract. That said, if you’re willing to go pretty much anywhere, that frees you up to prioritize other things when looking for your next contract. This can be hugely beneficial and is something to consider as travel nurse contracts are typically only three months long. If you don’t like a place, you don’t have to stay for long!

contract length

Like I said, a travel nurse contract is typically only three months long, or 13 weeks to be exact. However, there are shorter and longer contracts out there. Most often, travel nurses are offered to extend their contract by the hospital or facility they’re working at, approximately halfway through the contract.

If you’re hoping to stay in one place for longer than three months, you may be thinking you want to find a longer term contract. Keep in mind though, that you’re very likely to get the opportunity to stay longer, even if your contract is only set as 13 weeks to begin with. Alternatively, you may be looking for a shorter term contract. The vast majority of travel nurse contracts are 13 weeks; the shortest we’ve seen is 8 weeks.

There are also some limitations as to how long a travel nurse can work in the same area/city/contract. This is known as the “one year rule” set by the IRS, but agencies and hospitals sometimes have their own one year rule in addition.

hours

The standard travel nurse contract in a hospital setting is 36 hours per week, spread out between three twelve hour shifts. That said, there are many different variations to this even with hospital jobs, but also other types of facilities as well. Some contracts are for 48 hours (four twelve hour shifts), some are for 40 hours (five eight hour shifts), and anything in between.

If you’re hoping to work more than the standard 36 hours per week you may want to look at contracts where you’re hired to work more hours. It’s not always easy to pick up shifts as a travel nurse as hospitals have their own policies about this, as do travel nurse agencies. In our experience, Dan has usually been able to pick up an overtime shift here and there, as much as every other week at some hospitals. It really depends and you will likely not get to know how easy or difficult it will be until you start working at the hospital/facility.

day/night shift

This is another huge consideration for a lot of travel nurses. The majority of travel nurse contracts are for night shift positions. There’s a common statistic floating around in the travel nursing world that as many as 75% of travel nurse contracts are for nights. If you are set on working days, you may have to be a bit more flexible on other aspects of your prospective contracts like location, and maybe even pay.

How difficult it is to find a days positions could also depend on your experience and what unit(s) you’re able to work on. Dan’s first two travel nurse contracts had him working nights, but since then we’ve made it a priority to switch to days. In our experience, it’s taken a bit longer to find days contracts and we’ve had to cast our net a bit wider when it comes to location, as well as what level of pay we’re willing to accept. That said, there are no shift differentials in travel nursing so night positions don’t get paid more than days necessarily. There’s just more competition out there for the highest paying days contracts as they’re somewhat few and far between.

Check out our posts on working nights if you’re considering it!

unit

If you’re a more seasoned nurse, this probably applies to you much more than new grads or nurses with only a couple of years experience. Typically, nurses are required to have at least one year in a given specialty to qualify to work as a travel nurse (in general and also in that specialty). Some specialties/units require more than one year of experience. This means that many travel nurses only qualify to work on one or maybe two different kinds of units.

Since travel nurses are expected to be ready to work with such little training (typically two days on the unit), you won’t find many facilities willing to train travel nurses on a “new to them” unit. You may be floated as a travel nurse, but whatever unit you’re hired to work on will be one that you already have past experience working on. If you have experience in multiple units, you may find that you have a preference of which units you like to work on the most. If you qualify to work on multiple different units and don’t have much of a preference, you’ll have a much larger pool of contracts to sort through, potentially giving you greater chances to prioritize other criteria in choosing a contract.

pay

Finally, of course there’s pay. As Covid has dwindled so have the massive pay rises seen in travel nursing. There are some contracts out there that don’t even compare to what Dan has made in the past as a staff nurse. It’s still an opportunity to travel which is great, but when you take into account the instability of travel nursing and the expenses of short-term furnished housing, it may not seem worth it. Don’t get me wrong, many if not most travel nurse contracts pay higher than what most staff nurses make, but not all do, and it depends on the level of pay for staff nurses you’re comparing it to.

Nurses in New Hampshire (where we’re from and where Dan used to work) are reasonably high when looking at national averages and other states. So for us to choose travel nursing over staff nursing we aim for contracts that are higher paying than Dan’s previous staff jobs. Pay may not be so much of a factor for you if you come from a state where nurses are paid particularly badly. It’s important to keep in mind the varying cost of housing around the country though, as well as the other expenses inherent to travel nursing.

what are your top priorities when looking for a travel nurse contract?