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Finding Emergency Medicine Locum Tenens Physician Jobs With Lucidity

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An emergency medicine physician works in emergency rooms or trauma centers, treating patients who need immediate care. Emergency medicine physicians are specialized in cardiac life support, trauma care and managing other life threatening conditions.

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Locum tenens is a Latin phrase that means to hold the place and is used to describe when a physician works temporarily in a hospital or other healthcare facility. Emergency medicine locum tenens physicians allow hospitals to cover another physician’s vacation/medical leave, account for increased patient demand, or fill a gap while a new, permanent physician is searched for. In fact, some hospitals choose to staff more locum tenens physicians than permanent physicians, given their flexibility and ability to accommodate higher demand for ongoing coverage. The appropriate number and mix of locum tenens emergency medicine physicians allows healthcare organizations to provide quality healthcare to their patient populations, while offering locum tenens physicians more flexibility, extra income, the ability to travel, and exposure to new and evolving patient care environments.

Benefits Of Locum Tenens Emergency Room Work

Emergency medicine is one of the fastest growing healthcare specialties and physicians who practice it are in high demand. As the nation’s emergency medicine departments continue to treat an aging patient population, while being stretched continually thin, hospitals are turning to locum tenens emergency physicians to fill the void. This increase in demand offers a significant opportunity and multiple benefits for physicians looking to take emergency medicine locum assignments. Some of the main benefits to working as locum tenens emergency physicians include:

Flexibility

While working as a locum tenens emergency medicine physician, you have control over the jobs location, assignment length, and practice settings. There are a variety of locations and facilities available to emergency medicine physicians such as acute care hospitals, critical access hospitals, free-standing emergency department facilities, academic facilities, children’s hospitals, correctional facilities and physician groups. In addition, shifts are usually pre-set with fixed working hours. The shifts range from 8-12 hours, with some shifts lasting 24 hours or longer. Shift schedules are flexible in that they may be mornings, days, nights, weekends or holidays– after all, the emergency room is always open. As a locum tenens emergency medicine physician you will be able to negotiate the optimal shift schedule, allowing you to work around commitments outside of practicing medicine such as raising a family, caring for a loved one or working other full-time jobs.

Professional opportunities.

In the medical industry, establishing a strong relationship with your colleagues is an important part of providing patients with great care and bedside manner. Locum tenens assignments help you to build relationships with colleagues, expand your professional network, learn teamwork skills, and navigate hospital politics.

If you are a relatively new physician and new to locum tenens, this is the perfect time to gain invaluable experience in a short amount of time. Physicians in their mid to late careers can use locum tenens to work close to home or use it as a transitional step to opening a private medical practice or retiring.

Salary.

Salary rates are often comparable, if not higher than permanent physician positions due the high demand for covering a vacancy. The pay rates vary widely based on region, immediacy of demand, special skills wanted, board certification requirements, call requirements, and more, but average locum tenens emergency physician rates are usually between $168-$225/hour.

Patient focused care.

Emergency medicine physicians possess the skills to provide quality care in a short amount of time. These locum tenens physicians don’t need to worry about long term patient relationships, which ultimately allows them to concentrate on making an efficient diagnosis and providing a great bedside manner to the patient during a stressful time. 

Travel.

Locum tenens jobs allow physicians to travel to new cities or countries and experience different healthcare systems and practices. Experienced emergency medicine physicians may transition into a full or part time locum tenens job without the stress of managing a practice. Traveling also offers flexibility and freedom from daily routines.It’s the ultimate “try before you buy” career experience.

Location and facility type.

Location can be a huge deciding factor on the salary offered and how busy the emergency room will be. Rural areas tend to have a higher demand for locum tenens emergency physicians compared to larger urban areas such as New York or Chicago. This means that a smaller rural location may be willing to pay a higher rate when compared to a big city hospital where the competition for a locum tenens emergency physician job is more fierce. Some locum tenens staffing agencies will offer a bonus to fill rural emergency medicine jobs for an extended period of time. On the other hand, you should expect locum tenens rates to be commensurate with the regional cost of living. While the rate in rural Massachusetts may seem low to a physician who lives in Phoenix, Arizona, it is likely extremely competitive for the region. When deciding on a locum tenens emergency medicine opportunity, you may need to assess if the area you live in is more important to you when compared to the salary you will earn. In addition, you will need to assess the facility type you would like to work in such as an acute care hospital, critical access hospital, correctional facility, or physician group.

Why work with a locum tenens staffing agency?

While it is possible to find locum tenens emergency physician jobs on your own, working with a locum tenens staffing agency helps you to plan ahead. Staffing agencies offer access to multiple emergency medicine physician job postings in one place. Locum tenens emergency physicians are advised to plan their locum assignments about three months in advance, allowing you to have the details in place before your current job assignment ends. This is especially true when it comes to government healthcare jobs, as the credentialing timeline can last months. In addition, staffing agencies also offer the following benefits:

Licensing
Many locum tenens companies will handle the documentation and verification process and act as a liaison between the physicians, states boards, and various offices that are contacted during the application process. To work in an emergency department, we often see staffing requests that require physicians to have Board Certification in either Emergency medicine, Internal Medicine or Family Medicine, have an active BLS, ACLS, ATLS, PALS, or DEA, have experience with a particular EMR, have experience treating COVID-19 or kidney stones, etc. It all depends on the facility’s need. Some facilities do not require Board Certification, but instead will accept emergency room physicians with a certain number of years of experience.
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Travel and housing expertise
Many staffing agencies include travel and housing reimbursement in the negotiation process. Some agencies will even assist you with booking those travel arrangements.
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Malpractice Coverage
It is common for the staffing agency to provide some form of malpractice coverage in the contract, however, details and coverage limits may vary. The hospital or facility has the option to provide your malpractice coverage, too, but the agency will provide it if they choose not to. Malpractice coverage is an important part of being a locum tenens physician and having an agency assist in navigating the requirements is helpful. It is important to know your obligations ahead of time as malpractice insurance can be a significant cost that may impact your decision on a particular locum tenens job.
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Negotiation
Working directly with a locum tenens staffing agency allows you to negotiate the rate, shift preference, start date, days off and other job details important to you.
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If you are ready to start searching at locum tenens emergency physician opportunities, Lucidity is a great place to start. By using 15+ components about you and your preferences, we filter out the noise to deliver the best job matches to you directly. As a bonus, all fully verified physicians in our platform can log in to gain access the open locum tenens jobs any time they want. Yes, that means no waiting for the phone to ring when you are in search of the perfect role. If you’re ready to apply as a locum tenens emergency medicine physician, create a Lucidity account today.

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