locums?

[reedman]

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I have heard that locums work can be good money and a nice way to travel, but tends to get old pretty fast. Personally, I think locums would fit my personality well and would work really well for emergency medicine because of the shift work.

Can anyone share some personal experience about this type of work? Is it really a nice way to travel, or do you spend almost all of your time working with very little opportunity to see the sights? How about the pay? Would it be a good way to find a permanent position at a good place?

 

[spencerxd]

I have heard that locums work can be good money and a nice way to travel, but tends to get old pretty fast. Personally, I think locums would fit my personality well and would work really well for emergency medicine because of the shift work.

Can anyone share some personal experience about this type of work? Is it really a nice way to travel, or do you spend almost all of your time working with very little opportunity to see the sights? How about the pay? Would it be a good way to find a permanent position at a good place?

bump, would like to hear more about locums also

 

[bartleby]

In general, departments that are looking for help from Locums Tenens agencies are places that are having trouble attracting permanent staff for one reason or another. This departmental turmoil (bunch of docs leaving at once), poor leadership, or other issues with the hospital, location, living conditions. This can seem somewhat paradoxical, as I've known folks who have done locums in Hawaii. Hawaii is awesome, right? Not unless you like eating Spam for dinner, as it can be pretty rough living in places like that even on a physician's salary not to mention the fact that you can be pretty isolated from family, friends and it gets old dealing with turistas every single day. Furthermore, most locums people are seen locally as "hired guns" who are going to blow out of town when their contract is up rather than someone who is taking the job trying to put down roots.

Overall, locums can be fun if you want to live in different places and don't want to be tied down in a single location as you are if you take a "normal job". There can be other fringe benefits such as paid travel and living expenses while on a job, so if you have a friend or family member's couch to crash on between assignments, your actual living expenses can be quite low.

 

[Apollyon]

This can seem somewhat paradoxical, as I've known folks who have done locums in Hawaii. Hawaii is awesome, right? Not unless you like eating Spam for dinner, as it can be pretty rough living in places like that even on a physician's salary not to mention the fact that you can be pretty isolated from family, friends and it gets old dealing with turistas every single day.

Only because you mention this anecdote, I'll tell you I've seen 2 locums docs out here, and both were/are "working holiday" setups.

I've lived here almost 2 years, and have had Spam exactly zero times. I did have two porterhouse steaks after work this morning.

As far as tourists, not so much at most hospitals; at the same time, in the past 2 weeks, I've had 3 patients from 2 flights. We are the closest hospital to HNL, and these two flights were turned around on their way to the mainland (one to SFO, and one to LAX). Yep - planeload of people returned to the gate because they weren't past halfway yet. How many people admitted? Zero. One guy was even a doctor - on a plane full of doctors (the APA had their conference here).

Maui gets a lot of tourists (and rich and demanding ones, too), but they're also FFS, so it's not bad.

 

[reedman]

how long does a locums
"gig" usually last? i imagine that it would take a little time to get acclimated to a new environment. i was thinking that one would fill in for docs that are on maternity leave, injured, vacation, or pick up extra slack while they are trying to add a doc to the practice. is it pretty common to to fill someone's shoes who got pissed and quit or was fired? so that means that i would be working in some less that desirable circumstances at times, but there is no way to 100% avoid that anyway in any type of practice right?

also, had anyone on here ever worked on a cruise ship? it doesn't really sound like a great job but i thought now would be a good time to ask.

i'm thinking that locums might be a nice thing to do after i have paid off my debt and saved a little for retirement. in my 50s maybe i could work part time locums?