With the summer solstice just around the corner, summer is truly upon us.  Schools are out, the weather is taking a turn for the better, and physicians and medical practitioners everywhere are thinking about taking a summer vacation.  This can be one of the trickiest times of the year for hospitals and medical practices to keep such practices staffed appropriately. 

The medical industry is already suffering from high turnover rates as it is.  Studies show that poor work culture and poor work community are the top reasons (seventy-two percent) for medical turnover, and a spouse moving is the second most common reason.  With turnovers like these and current difficulties in staffing, it makes the summer months particularly difficult for staffing personnel.  In fact, it makes life difficult for all medical personnel in a practice, not just the staffing personnel, because when turnover occurs other medical professionals then have to cover those shifts.  This leads to burnout amongst physicians and other practitioners, which then leads to an increased interest in long summer vacations.

How Locum Tenens Can Help

Locum tenens is a useful tool for avoiding the above manifestations as they are there to help healthcare staffing personnel avoid such difficulties.  Healthcare staffing personnel need to use locum tenens to plan coverage for any kind of practice, no matter the size, to actually plan in advance for those summer months when staff like to take their vacations the most.  Locum tenens can be used to address both planned and unplanned absences in staff, and this service is excellent as a quick remedy to be used adjacent to ongoing employee recruitment and searching. 

When bringing on a locum tenens physician, it’s important to ensure that the locum tenens doctor’s shifts cover the practice’s doctor’s schedule exactly.  When arranging this, it is important to find a locum tenens doctor who can line himself or herself up exactly with the missing schedule slots of the vacationing doctor. 

Using locum tenens is the most common way for easing the pressure off of full-time staff in any medical facility.  With turnout rates the way that they are and the ever increasing demands of modern medicine and the medical industry in general, standard recruiting and hiring processes are simply not enough. Locum tenens is a great way to quickly and efficiently cover shifts during the busy summer months and to avoid overworking and burnout within a medical facility.

Why a Locum Tenens Organization this Summer is the Right Answer

Consider working with Medstaff this summer.  Even if no one has a summer vacation scheduled yet, consider that it’s best to get a head start on this and line up backup coverage for a practice’s working shifts.  It’s best to work with a reputable locum tenens staffing firm because our firm adheres to the nation-wide, industry-wide standards for staffing, professionalism, ethics, and service. 

The strength of temporary providers for locum tenens professionals is that we have the ability to make immediate changes and solve immediate staffing problems in the blink of an eye.  Locums personnel are specialists in this field and are trained in being able to approach a new setting and to quickly adapt to that new environment.  Hiring a locum tenens temporary staff member allows for the practice to continue to run at max efficiency.

Another great benefit to using locum tenens is that such individuals can often bring a new perspective and a new skill set and arrangement of experiences from their shifts at different healthcare centers.  At the very least, hiring a locum tenens individual will free up other team members.  More often than not though, temporary hires can help a medical practice grow and improve too.

If medical practices start working with locum tenens personnel now, such practices will be able to offset the possibility of being short staffed this summer.  In addition to that, these practices will still be able to hold to their satisfaction and success rates (rates often suffer when understaffing and high turnovers occur).  The practices will still be able to see just as many patients too and the summer will be far more enjoyable for everyone involved. Contact Medstaff for your locum tenens staffing needs.