For many nurses entering the field of travel nursing, the first question is often, “How do I get started and how do I find travel assignments?”

While independent contracting with facilities is possible, most travel nurses employ the assistance of a travel nursing company. However, with literally hundreds of companies, the challenge of choosing that perfect company can be daunting.

Before you start your search, figure out what things are most important to you as a traveler. EVERYONE wants top pay, great healthcare, and beautiful locations. But if there were one company that provided all of those things, on every assignment, then there would only be ONE travel company (with which everyone would travel).

Some companies will pay a higher hourly rate, some will have better healthcare coverage at less of a monthly premium, and some will have nicer company housing or pay a higher stipend. What you must know is that every travel company likely signs the same compensation package with any given facility. Where they differ is in their allocation of that money. That is why you must choose which benefits are most important to you and find a company that allocates more of the compensation package in those areas.

As an easy, but less fruitful way to check out companies, you can simply type “travel nursing” into any search engine and then click links to the websites of hundreds of companies. Stay away from sites that list the “top ten super-greatest, most awesome, better than all-the-rest” travel companies or offer to send your information to twenty companies with just one application. I have had numerous people that have contacted me after doing so, only to report they still had no idea with whom to travel (and they also had twenty recruiters, leavings messages throughout the day).

Search sites where others have traveled in your same footsteps. Some great travel nursing online forums can be found at ultimatenurse.com, allnurses.com, and the Delphi forum for traveling professionals (go to delphiforums.com, look for the box on the right that says “Explore existing forums”, type in “travel nursing” and a top result is a group called Travel Nurses and Therapists).

Pan Travelers is also another good site with a forum and you can also join the Healthcare Travelbook (healthcaretravelbook.com), which is a sort of Facebook-style place for travelers, which also has a forum.

You can either search the posts for a particular company or sign up and seek out other members who might have had experience with that company, by posting a query of your own.  

Another way to gauge a travel company can be by the amount of time they have been in business (not all “young” companies are bad, just as not all companies that have been in the business a while will be good). Longevity just says that they have been doing this awhile and should have most of their ducks in a row (and it also means you should be able to find out more about them on the forums).

Also, look and see if they have a Better Business Bureau rating. Not all companies are accredited by the BBB (most might not be) but even if a company is not accredited by the BBB, they may have a rating and you can see if anyone has ever filed a complaint against them.

Finally, I recommend simply typing the company name into a search browser along with the word “complaint” or “review”. This sometimes yields some pretty interesting results.

I also always stress that your recruiter (your contact at the travel company), can be just as an important part of the equation as the company itself. If you call a company “cold” (without asking for a specific person), it’s kind of a cr*pshoot and you may be paired with a recruiter that has years in the business, or one who has just been on the job a few months.

Ask travel nurses that you may encounter on the job or those in the forums that are traveling with the companies that interest you. I also answer questions about travel nursing over at travelnursingblogs.com and do offer to help pair travelers up with the recruiters I use and trust with my travels.

Bio‐ David Morrison

David Morrison is an RN with 18 years of experience as a travel nurse, author of the book, Travel Nurse’s Bible, and writes for various travel nursing websites and magazines.