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Your Travel Nursing Contract Is Ending... Now What?
Somehow, you made it.
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Remember that first day when you couldn’t find the supply room, didn’t know anyone’s name, and wondered how you were ever going to figure this hospital out?
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Well, you figured it out.
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And right about the time you finally feel completely comfortable...
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Your 13-week contract is almost over.
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Welcome to travel nursing. 😂
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Now you have another decision to make:
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Do you stay, take some time off, or head somewhere new?
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Option 1: Extend Your Travel Nursing Contract
Love the hospital?
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Love the area?
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Not quite ready to leave?
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You may be able to extend your contract.
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Extensions are incredibly common in travel nursing. If the facility still needs help and you’ve been a good fit, keeping you is often much easier than bringing in a brand-new traveler.
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But an extension is still a new contract.
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That means this is your opportunity to look at the details again.
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The pay could change.
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You might ask for different dates or a shorter extension.
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You may want specific time off.
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There could be something about your schedule or contract that you’d like to change the second time around.
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Ask.
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The worst they can say is no.
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And if the hospital really wants you to stay, you may have a little more negotiating power than you did the first time around.
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What If You Love the Hospital but Not Your Agency?
Here’s something newer travelers may not realize:
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You can sometimes stay at the same facility while switching travel nursing agencies.
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This is sometimes called an extension flip.
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If another agency can represent you at that facility, you may be able to extend through them instead.
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There is a catch.
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If you haven’t worked with the new agency before, you’ll probably need to go through its onboarding process.
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Remember that giant digital folder of licenses, certifications, health records, and nursing documents we told you to build way back at the beginning of this series?
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Look at you being prepared.
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Having those documents organized makes switching agencies a whole lot easier.
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Option 2: Take Some Time Off
Can we talk about one of the BEST parts of travel nursing?
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You don’t necessarily have to start another job immediately.
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When one contract ends, you get to decide when the next one begins.
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Early in our travel nursing years, we usually took a week or two between assignments. That gave us enough time to move the RV and get settled somewhere new.
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As we became more financially prepared, those breaks got longer.
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At one point, John took about five months off throughout a single year between contracts.
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Five months.
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Not PTO.
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Not vacation requests.
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Just intentionally choosing when we wanted to work.
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That flexibility became one of our favorite parts of this lifestyle.
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But Plan for the Gap
Of course, there’s an important catch to all that glorious time off.
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You’re not getting paid.
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If you want to take several weeks or months between contracts, build that into your financial plan.
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Think about your regular bills.
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Think about travel expenses.
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Think about when your final paycheck from one assignment arrives and when your first paycheck from the next one will hit your account.
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A month between jobs may require more than one month of expenses sitting in savings because of the timing of those paychecks.
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The freedom is amazing.
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It just works a whole lot better when you’ve planned for it.
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Option 3: Pick Your Next Adventure
Maybe you don’t want to stay.
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Maybe you’re ready to see what’s next.
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Time to pull out the Travel Nurse Trifecta again.
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Location.
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Money.
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Shift and job.
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What matters most this time?
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Maybe your priorities have changed since your first contract.
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Maybe you discovered you love the mountains.
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Maybe you want to chase warmer weather.
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Maybe this next contract is about making as much money as possible so you can take a long break afterward.
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That’s one of the great things about travel nursing:
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The answer doesn’t have to stay the same.
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Every few months, you get another opportunity to decide what you want the next season of your life to look like.
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And Then You Start Again
This is the funny thing about travel nursing.
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Just when you finally know where everything is...
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You leave.
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New city.
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New hospital.
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New coworkers.
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New supply closet.
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And somehow, the whole thing that felt terrifying the first time feels a little more manageable the second time around.
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Then a little easier the third.
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Before long, you’re not trying to become a travel nurse anymore.
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You are one.
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Want the Full Story?
This episode brings our entire Travel Healthcare 101 journey full circle.
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John and I talk about extensions, negotiating a new contract, switching agencies, planning time off between assignments, preparing financially for those breaks, and deciding where your travel nursing adventure takes you next.
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We also look back at everything we covered throughout this series, from figuring out what travel nursing even is to successfully completing your first assignment.
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Watch Travel Healthcare 101: Extensions, Time Off & What Comes Next
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You Made It Through Travel Healthcare 101!
If you started this series wondering whether travel nursing was even possible for you, we hope you’re leaving with a much better idea of what this life actually looks like.
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We’ve covered agencies.
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Recruiters.
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Licensing.
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Job hunting.
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Interviews.
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Contracts.
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Housing.
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Your first day.
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And, most importantly to us, the adventures you can have along the way.
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Travel nursing completely changed our family’s life.
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It gave us the opportunity to explore this country together while John continued doing the work he loved.
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It wasn’t always easy.
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But it gave us a life that looked a whole lot less ordinary.
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And that’s really what this whole thing has been about.
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Ready to start from the beginning? Explore the complete Travel Healthcare 101 series →
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