The rate is the part of a travel assignment nurses compare. The contract is the part that decides what the rate is worth. Almost every travel nursing horror story is a clause that was in the document and was not read.
The agency is normally the employer; the hospital is the agency's client. That structure is why a nurse's remedy for almost anything is in the agency contract rather than with the facility.
Thirteen weeks, and the exceptions
Thirteen weeks is not a rule of thumb, it is the overwhelming default. Of the 1.37 million travel postings in NurseRecruiter's archive that state a length, 82 percent say exactly 13 weeks. The next most common lengths are 12 weeks, then 8, then 14.
The exceptions are worth knowing because they signal something. Eight weeks and shorter usually means a seasonal or crisis requirement; see crisis and strike assignments. Twenty-six weeks, which is under one percent of postings, means the facility has stopped pretending the gap is temporary, and is worth reading against the twelve-month tax horizon discussed below.
Guaranteed hours
A package quoted as a weekly figure assumes a number of hours, usually 36 or 48. Whether the nurse is paid for those hours when the unit is quiet is a separate question, and the answer is in the guaranteed hours clause.
Where hours are guaranteed, the agency pays for the contracted hours even if the facility cancels shifts, usually up to a stated limit. Where they are not, a called-off shift is simply unpaid, and a quiet census can take a fifth of a week's income without anything going wrong.
Read what conditions void the guarantee. Common ones are refusing a float assignment, refusing an offered make-up shift, or missing a shift for any reason including illness.
Call-offs and low census
Facilities cancel shifts when the census drops. The contract should say how much notice is given, how many call-offs are permitted before compensation is owed, and whether cancelled shifts can be rescheduled within the same week or pay period.
The distinction that matters is between a shift the nurse is paid for and a shift the nurse is allowed to make up. Being offered a Saturday to replace a cancelled Tuesday is not the same as being paid, particularly for anyone with the sort of life that made a set schedule attractive.
Cancellation of the whole assignment
An assignment can end early. Facilities cancel when their needs change, when a unit closes, or when permanent hires arrive, and during the 2022 downturn nurses were cancelled while already driving to the assignment.
What the contract should tell you: how much notice the facility must give, whether the agency owes anything for the remainder, whether housing continues or ends immediately, whether travel reimbursement or a completion bonus already paid becomes repayable, and whether the agency will attempt to place you elsewhere.
Cancellation clauses are usually mutual in form and asymmetric in effect. A nurse who leaves early may owe repayment of travel and bonus money; a facility that cancels early frequently owes nothing but notice.
Floating
Most contracts allow the facility to float the nurse to other units. This is normal and it is also where a nurse can end up carrying a patient load in an area they are not competent in.
The clause should state which units the nurse can be floated to, and it is worth adding in writing any unit you will not accept. Refusing a float when the contract permits it can be treated as a missed shift with the penalties that carry. Competence, not the contract, governs what is safe to accept; see scope of practice.
Schedule, on call and time off
The contract, not a conversation with the recruiter, is where the schedule lives: shift length, days or nights, whether shifts are block-scheduled or scattered, weekend and holiday obligations, and whether on-call is required and at what rate.
Requested time off has to be written into the contract before signing. Once the assignment starts, unpaid days off are at the facility's discretion and often count against attendance terms.
Penalties and attendance
Many contracts carry consequences for missed shifts: loss of the hours guarantee, a deduction, or grounds for termination. Some carry a completion bonus that disappears if the assignment ends early for any reason.
None of this is unusual in temporary staffing. It becomes a problem when a nurse assumes staff-job norms about calling in sick.
Insurance, and what happens if something goes wrong
Two cover questions belong in the same conversation as the rate.
Professional liability. Ask whether the agency's policy covers claims reported after the contract ends. A claims-made policy responds only while it is in force unless extended cover is bought, and a nursing claim can arrive years after the shift. An occurrence policy responds to anything that happened while it was in force, whenever the claim arrives.
Workers' compensation. As the employer, the agency normally carries it, but the nurse is working in someone else's building, so it is worth knowing who to report an injury to and within what time limit.
Restrictions after the assignment ends
Historically two clauses limited what a nurse could do next. Conversion or placement fees charged the facility if it hired the agency's nurse permanently, which in practice discouraged the facility from offering. Restrictive clauses limited where the nurse could work afterwards.
Some states now prohibit both. New York's 2023 law bars a temporary staffing agency from restricting where its workers may otherwise work and from imposing charges or damages on a worker or a facility when the worker is offered a permanent job. The rules are state by state; see nurse staffing agencies.
Extensions
Extensions are the cheapest good outcome in travel nursing: no licensing wait, no move, no unpaid gap, and a facility that already knows the nurse. They are also a negotiation. The rate on an extension is not automatically the rate on the original contract, and the facility's urgency has usually gone down.
Watch the twelve-month horizon. Repeated extensions at one location can make the work no longer temporary for tax purposes, which changes the treatment of the stipends. See travel nurse taxes.
Before signing
Get the offer in writing, in full, with the hourly split, the stipends, the guaranteed hours, the shift, the cancellation terms and the requested days off all stated. A verbal assurance from a recruiter is not a term of the contract.
Ask what the facility's ratios and float practice actually are, why the position is open, and how long it has been open. A post open for months is either a hard sell or a hard unit, and turnover data says which is more likely: turnover runs from 22.5 percent in behavioural health down to 13.4 percent in paediatrics, and time to fill from 56 to 102 days depending on specialty. Those questions are set out at length in ten questions to ask a travel nurse recruiter.
Related
- Travel nursing
- Travel nurse pay packages
- Agencies and recruiters
- Crisis and strike assignments
- Where the assignments are
Sources
- Temporary health care staffing agencies now required to register in New York. Garfunkel Wild, on the 2023 registration law and its restrictions on agency contract terms. Accessed September 9, 2026.
- Travel nurses were shocked by stories of a sudden drop in demand. Should you be worried? NurseRecruiter, 18 June 2022, on mid-assignment cancellations. Accessed September 9, 2026.
- What is Travel Nursing? NurseRecruiter, on contract length and cancellation risk. Accessed September 9, 2026.
- Ten questions you should ask your travel nurse recruiter. NurseRecruiter, 26 January 2017. Accessed September 9, 2026.
- 78 days to hire one nurse: the 2026 staffing numbers every nurse employer should know. NurseRecruiter, 3 September 2026, for turnover and time to fill by specialty. Accessed September 9, 2026.
- NurseRecruiter travel job listings, 2009 to September 2026, for the distribution of stated contract lengths. Method and limits are set out in where the assignments are.