VISTA Voice

As a parent, managing locum tenens work can be challenging. But during the summer, when your kids are out of school for summer vacation, you have various options to help you manage work while remaining present as a parent. Here are a few ways to manage locum tenens work through the summer season.

For many, locum tenens work is an exciting way to work in the medical field. And while traveling is one of the best, most attractive aspects of this career path, it can be stressful for many clinicians. This typically involves coordinating flights, finding housing and arranging for ground transportation, too.

Regular physical activity and healthy eating habits produce many benefits: Reducing the risk of chronic disease, improving mental and emotional health, boosting energy, lowering stress, and improving sleep. For healthcare professionals, staying fit is key to handling the strain of their work responsibilities and maintaining their overall well-being.

As summer rolls around, you may feel the urge to escape your day-to-day routine to take on new adventures. If you're a medical professional, locum tenens is the perfect solution. With locum tenens, you can experience new places, scenery and destinations while maintaining a good stream of income.

In a prior post, we focused on six locum tenens locations great for beating the summer heat. Here are five more states you should consider visiting this summer:

If you're looking for a new way to serve your community, there are plenty of government locum tenens positions that await your expertise. These assignments can take you into unexpected fields, such as research and military work, as well as offer opportunities to work with diverse and underserved populations. Other benefits of government locum tenens include job security, great work-life balance, competitive pay and even loan repayment assistance.

When traveling for locum tenens, you must plan ahead to ensure your home continues functioning as if you never left. You need to pay all bills on time, keep track of your appointments and ensure your home is properly maintained, just to name a few things. Thankfully, it does not take an enormous amount of work to make this happen from afar. With a little forethought and the right level of action, you can keep your home running smoothly whether you will be gone weeks or months. Here’s what you can do to ensure it does.

To start, government locum tenens jobs tend to last longer - generally lasting between three months to one year. Additionally, clinicians typically work in facilities that target underserved groups like Native Americans or veterans of a specific branch of the military. These facilities include DOD (Department of Defense) facilities, Veterans Affairs facilities, Indian Health Services, and other federal or state facilities, like prisons or behavioral health hospitals. Primary care and psychiatry are the top specialties in demand at these facilities, although locum tenens clinicians of all specialties are sought after.

Travel is one of the key reasons clinicians are attracted to locum tenens jobs. But even the excitement for travel opportunities does not eliminate the fact that making travel and housing arrangements can be a headache for locum tenens clinicians - consuming your time and causing you more hassle.

One available option is to work with a full-service locum tenens agency that can handle your travel and housing arrangements. And understanding what to expect can help you select an agency that best fits your needs and ensure that you get the most out of working with them.

With many reasons to love locum tenens work, you may not have even considered the potential benefits you can earn through airline and hotel loyalty rewards programs. But it can pay to take advantage of these perks.

Travel points can add up quickly, giving you the means to fly and stay free when you want to get away for a vacation. Rewards programs for travelers are generally free, and signing up is easy. Once you’ve added your rewards member numbers to your VISTA travel profile, the airline miles and hotel points will accumulate automatically when you travel.

Locum tenens is a way of practicing medicine that is appealing to clinicians in many stages of their career. It can help reduce certain stressors that may come with full-time roles. It also provides benefits to those who are just starting their career and unsure of where they’d like to practice long-term.

Working locum tenens provides a way for clinicians to travel to new and exciting locations. For example, you can work in a city you’ve always wanted to visit without making a permanent commitment to live there forever. But, if you love the place, you can continue finding assignments in that location to remain there long-term. There are almost too many advantages of locum tenens to share, but here are just a few unexpected benefits you may not be aware of.