As a travel nurse, you are probably registered with a handful (maybe even a dozen) travel nurse staffing agencies throughout the U.S. And, even though you have probably only used two or three of them during the last year or so, you do your diligent part by keeping your paperwork up-to-date with each of the agencies. This typically allows you to get e-mails from each of the individual agencies that offer details of available travel nursing assignments each of the agencies has at any point in time. And while managing all these agencies, their contacts and your paperwork can seem daunting, for now, it’s a necessary evil.

I hope this doesn’t scare off new travel nurses.  Once you get the paperwork out of the way, it’s usually smooth sailing. From there, here’s how I typically suggest that a travel nurse find assignments:

Choose Your Location First
The first thing I suggest to new travel nurses (or any travel nurse, for that matter) is that they choose where they do - and do not - want to take a travel nurse assignment. Registering yourself with a large number of travel nurse agencies does increase your chances of finding an assignment in any location I choose. From what I hear in the industry, the only difficulty travel nurses have when finding an assignment has been when they have searched for work in small towns with small facilities. Most travel nurses never have problems finding assignments in cities populations greater than 30,000 people.

Travel nurses use a number of ways to choose locations. Some have picked ideal locations after visiting them on vacation, some chosen a particular place because they just want to experience living there, some even take a particular assignment to be near relatives for the holidays, while some simply choose an assignment based on the amount of money they can make. It has been my experience that anywhere you choose there will be at least one medical facility that hires travel nurses.

If you aren’t sure whether you’ll like a particular location you have chosen, ask your agencies for a shorter 3 or 4 week assignment. From what I have heard, some agencies will try to work with you on the length of an assignment.