Congrats on your first travel nurse contract! What to actually look at before you sign

Congrats! You've decided to become a travel nurse. I'm sure you're equal parts excited, scared and confused. I still remember signing my first contract. It felt like signing a lease on an apartment I'd never seen, in a city I'd never visited, based on nothing but a contract and promises from a recruiter. Thirteen weeks of my life committed. If you're staring down your first contract right now, that feeling is normal, and it's exactly why "what do I need to know before my first contract" gets asked in every travel nursing Facebook group and on r/TravelNursing pretty much every day. The good news is that the answers don't change much once you've been doing this a while. Here's what I actually think about now that I've been doing this awhile.

1. Get the pay broken down. Don't accept a single "blended rate" number

Recruiters love to quote one all-in hourly number, something like "$55/hour blended." That number combines your taxable hourly wage with the dollar value of your tax-free stipends and benefits, averaged into an hourly-sounding figure. It's not what actually lands in your account each week, and it's not a fair way to compare two agencies against each other.

Before you sign anything, ask your recruiter to break it down into:

• Taxable hourly base rate
• Weekly housing stipend
• Weekly meals & incidentals (M&IE) stipend
• Travel reimbursement
• Any completion or extension bonus, and exactly what triggers it

If a recruiter won't itemize this for you, that might be a red flag.

2. Confirm your guaranteed hours, in writing

Your pay package assumes you're working a set number of hours a week, usually 36 or 40. If census dips and shifts start getting cancelled, "guaranteed hours" is the clause that decides whether you still get paid for what you were promised. Without it, you might be getting paid way less per week with the same weekly bills. Honestly, this is the complaint I hear from first-year travelers more than anything else, and it's worth confirming.

Ask straight up: what happens if I get cancelled for low census? Is call-off pay guaranteed, and how many cancelled shifts can happen before I can walk away from the contract without penalty?

3. Sort out your tax home before you touch a stipend

Those tax-free housing and meal stipends are only tax-free if you actually have a legitimate tax home, meaning a permanent residence you maintain and regularly return to. Skip that, or stack back-to-back assignments in one city with no real break, and the IRS can decide you're an itinerant worker instead, which makes those stipends taxable after the fact. Get this sorted before your first assignment starts, not after your first tax season. Talking to a tax pro who actually works with travel healthcare (not just a general accountant) is my advice, and it's advice I wish someone had given me.

4. Actually read the cancellation clauses

Two things to look for specifically:

• Facility cancellation notice: how many days' notice does the hospital (and your agency) owe you if they end the contract early?
• Your own exit terms: what happens if you have to leave early? Family emergency, licensure snag, safety concern? Some contracts have damage clauses or clawed-back bonuses buried in here.

5. Know what "extension" really means for your pay

Extensions feel like a win. Same unit, no new onboarding, no learning a new EMR. But agencies will sometimes quietly drop the rate on an extension, especially once whatever crisis need brought the pay up has cooled off. Get the extension rate confirmed in writing before you agree to it. Don't assume it just carries over.

6. Ask about the stuff that affects your actual shifts, not just your paycheck

This is what I didn't think enough about on my first contract and what every experienced traveler wants you to know: nurse-to-patient ratios on the actual unit, what EMR the facility uses (walking into an unfamiliar system adds real stress to starting a new contract), parking situation and cost, and how long orientation actually is. I might take a slightly lower hourly rate if these things are better.

7. Vet the agency, not just the offer

Look at how long the agency's been placing nurses, whether they're Joint Commission certified, and how other travelers talk about them, not just what's on the agency's own website. One glowing case study on a homepage means nothing next to a consistent pattern of reviews from actual travelers.

The bottom line

Getting your first contract right will make your start into travel nursing so much better. Get details on the pay breakdown, get your guarantees in writing, sort out your tax home before leaving home, and don't skip the "boring" questions about ratios and EMRs. It might seem like a hassle, but it's about making sure the genuinely good parts of travel nursing don't get overtaken by the negative stuff.