Travel contracts get cancelled. The paperwork gives the facility a clean exit and gives you almost nothing. Before you sign the next one, find out what week four would cost.
The contract, and where it ends
Total exposure
$0
The contract you signed
Lost wages
$0
Housing still owedRent on an apartment you no longer need
$0
Travel and setup not recoveredSpent to start a contract that did not finish
$0
Unpaid gap before the next assignment
$0
Completion bonus forfeited
$0
Reimbursements clawed back
$0
Total exposure
$0
Equivalent toWeeks of the package you were promised
0 weeks
Six clauses that decide this number
Read these before you sign, not after. Once you sign, you have no leverage. Every item below is negotiable and most travelers never raise any of them.
Cancellation notice, both directions
Most contracts let the facility cancel with little or no notice while charging you a penalty or a set number of weeks if you leave. Symmetry is the test. If they get seven days and you owe four weeks, that is the whole imbalance in one clause.
Ask: can we make the notice period the same for both parties?
What voids guaranteed hours
Guaranteed hours almost always carry an exception list. Facility cancellation, low census, diversion, and refusal to float are the common four. An at-will clause elsewhere in the document can override the guarantee entirely.
Ask: which specific circumstances void the guarantee, and where is that clause?
Whether the agency shares its cancellation penalty
The agreement between the agency and the facility often lets the agency bill one to two weeks when the facility cancels without cause. That money exists. Your contract with the agency almost never mentions it, and almost nobody asks whether any of it comes to you.
Ask: if the facility cancels without cause, does your agreement with them include a penalty, and will you share it?
Housing, and who carries the lease
Agency-provided housing means the agency holds the lease and the cancellation risk. A stipend means you hold both. That is a large part of why the stipend looks better on paper. If you take the stipend, look for month to month terms or an early termination clause before signing anything locally.
Ask the landlord: what is the early termination fee, and is subletting permitted?
Reimbursement clawback
License fees, travel allowances, and sign-on bonuses are frequently recoverable by the agency if the assignment does not complete, including when the cancellation was not your doing. That distinction is worth getting in writing.
Ask: does the clawback apply if the facility cancels, and can we exclude that case?
Float scope
Float scope belongs on this list because refusing a float assignment is one of the most common ways a contract ends early. Language like "as assigned" or "as needed" with no named unit means you can be moved anywhere, and declining can be treated as cause.
Ask: can we name the specific units, with mutual consent for anything outside them?
Why nobody publishes this number
Search for travel nurse contract guidance and the top results are published by staffing agencies. Read them closely and notice what is missing. The largest agency in the country has a page on what to look for in a travel nursing contract. It covers pay rates and housing arrangements, then stops. Cancellation is not mentioned. Guaranteed-hours exceptions are not mentioned. Float scope, non-competes, liquidated damages, and clawbacks are not mentioned.
That is not an oversight. Those clauses are where risk gets transferred from the facility and the agency onto the traveler, and the parties publishing the guidance are the ones the transfer benefits. Nurse-authored sources are more direct and reach the same conclusion every time: the contract gives you essentially no recourse, and the advice on offer is to talk to your recruiter, post about it publicly, or call the labor board.
The part most people get wrong
Lost wages are the obvious cost and usually not the largest one. The gap is. A contract cancelled at week four does not just cost nine weeks of pay. It drops you into an unplanned search with no income while the lease, the car payment, and the health premium keep running. Four weeks to land and start something new is realistic. For a non-compact state license it is longer.
Housing is the second underestimated line. Taking the stipend instead of agency housing looks like free money, because the stipend is usually worth more than the housing would cost. What you are actually being paid for is carrying the lease risk. In a year with no cancellation you win that trade. In a year with one, the apartment outlives the job.
What to do with the number
Run it at your realistic worst case, then compare that against the difference between two offers. A contract paying two hundred dollars a week more with no cancellation notice and a full clawback is often worth less than the quieter offer with symmetric notice and month to month housing. That comparison is the entire point of this tool.
Then take the six questions above to your recruiter. Not all of them will move. Notice symmetry and the clawback exclusion move more often than people expect, mostly because so few travelers ask.
Who built this
LocumsLab is built by a practicing CRNA who reviews locums anesthesia contracts. The specialties differ and the pay structures differ, but the clause patterns are close to identical, because a small number of staffing firms write the paper for all of it.
Want the clauses found for you?
The LocumsLab Contract Analyzer reads the document itself and flags cancellation language, guaranteed-hours exceptions, non-competes, and missing protections, with the clause quoted back to you.
Estimate only. Not tax, legal, or financial advice. For non-compete, liquidated damages, or clawback language, talk to an employment attorney licensed in the assignment state. Nothing you enter is uploaded, stored, or transmitted. The calculation runs entirely in your browser.