sonal gupta 
Replacing doctors on regular leave or during crisis situations, locum tenens supplemental staffing (LTS) is used by many healthcare organisations to ensure access to patients during staffing crises. UPMC has created its own supplemental staffing locum tenens pool as an internal resource, using Syncx’s platform.
In fact, that flexibility – and the exposure to multiple worlds of practice, from different models of care to hospital cultures to patient demographics – is probably the most valuable thing about working locums tenens. For senior physicians nearing retirement but loath to hang-up the stethoscope, it’s a great way to keep your hands in clinically.
Flexibility
When medical facilities do not have access to staff, it is not pleasant for the patients, who often have to wait for the appointments, calls from doctors, and do not engage in treatment in time. Stress increases, the patients lose confidence in their healthcare team. While some facilities struggle to staff service areas and departments on the regular basis, others are turning to locum tenens providers for support through periods of staffing shortages.
Additionally, locum tenens work is less restrictive: whether professionals are investigating new professional openings, picking up temporary travel assignments, or looking for permanent employment, locum tenens providers determine when and where they wish to accept locum contracts. By accepting a contract on an inpatient or outpatient basis, and working full- or part-time with more or less hours per week, or for a longer or shorter period of time, they avoid burnout while reaching the ideal work/life balance they desire.
Just as with true polymaths, these locum tenens physicians expose themselves to a rich range of experience. They encounter hospitals ‘systems’, patient cultures and medical practice in a kaleidoscope of environments, and can then pull these lessons deftly into their own work, enriching the patient relationships they build as well. It’s a shift that medical teams, and patient satisfaction, can benefit from. Locum tenens clinicians can bring positive change to how medicine is experienced and to the fabric of medical teams and institutions. This flexible career path has become very attractive: a recent survey found that almost every medical practitioner (physician, nurse or physician assistant) gave ‘freedom/flexibility’ as a top priority.
Reliability
The state of the health care field is one of constant movement, and there has been an increase for locum tenens. Moreover, many medical facilities are not staffed long enough to have full time employees and rely heavily on locum tenens when their full time employees go out on leave or they experience an unexpected surge in volume of people seeking care, ensuring the continuity of patient care.
For physicians fresh out of residency or fellowship and established doctors as well, locum tenens work is chosen to sample work environments, sites and scales before making commitments. Some physicians and other healthcare professionals also use locum tenens work to diversify their experience as travellers – to have experiences they might not have otherwise during their careers and while they are still relatively youthful and energetic. These same locums might also want to think of contributing to underserved areas and developing countries around the world.
Thanks to technological innovations that improve locum tenens as a service, all of these scenarios grow less likely all the time. Matching the clinician with the appropriate openings and putting a contract in place are becoming as easy as ordering dinner online. Credentialing is speeded up, so that clinicians can be ready to start an assignment as soon as possible. That’s good news for facilities and for clinicians. Turnaround time is faster for the facilities, which means they can fill vacancies faster, and physicians can be more selective about the assignments they’ll accept.
Stability
For any and all of these reasons, advancement, or even if you are a health professional looking for more balance or more options in your work and lifestyle, locums can afford you the steady regularity and predictability to confidently build the schedule and lifestyle you want. Whether you are in a relationship or you have family that drives your travel and employment decisions, you can choose to stay closer to home and fill locum positions that are nearby.
Locums may also be great for facilities or communities that experience physician shortages or vacancies – you know as a provider that if a patient experiences a delay in seeing their provider of record, it can spread to others waiting for an appointment and, subsequently, a delay in treatment. Hospitals and communities can hopefully lean on temporary health providers to help them stay afloat.
Moreover, temporary work as a clinician, particularly around the world, can give you insight into many different specialised niches and lead to useful knowledge that you can take back to practice full-time. Depending on what you choose to do, work assignments can help to orient you to various healthcare models, patient expectations, prevalent disease states and more. You could take the lessons you learn in the field and apply them back home in ways that help impact the care you deliver in practice, for patients – maybe especially for those in rural facilities – where your impact, more than anywhere else, could make a difference.
