If you’re tasked with the job of hiring locum physicians, you have a lot of qualities to consider before allowing a new physician to work at your practice.
Word of mouth can be the best kind of marketing there is, and if a locum physician has a bad experience with a patient, that patient may not recommend for future patients to use your medical practice. That patient may also take their medical needs elsewhere.
Although bringing on various locums can be a tough job (especially if you need to hire multiple locums at once), if you follow a couple of the tips below you’ll find that your hiring process will be vastly improved.
Check Their Credentials
While this seems like a fairly obvious choice for the hiring process in general, double, or triple, checking an interested locum physician’s credentials could save you a lot of time and trouble in the long run.
Call the locums’ last employers and other references to ask what type of worker the physician was while at their practice. Do they excel in their area of work as much as they might have claimed that they do?
While many locums enjoy being a locum tenen due to the ease of traveling the United States or because it allows them to have more flexibility in their own schedule, you should still check with their prior employers to learn how they enjoyed working with that particular physician.
Moreover, you can also choose to conduct a thorough background check on them to be sure about their credibility. With the nature of work of locum physicians, you must make sure they’re being 100 percent honest about what they put on their credentials for your health and safety.
Video Call Them For Their Interview
Although any type of live conversation can be beneficial to learn more about an interviewee, having a video call instead of simply talking over the telephone can help you gain a better handle on what type of person the physician may be. You want to make sure that you’re bringing in a qualified physician, but you’re also looking for someone who you know will be an automatic fit with the rest of your team. Locum physicians should be helping your practice run smoothly during the absence of another doctor. Bringing someone in who clashes with the rest of the staff completely defeats that purpose.
You should also ask them about their past work experiences while you are on the video call with them. One of the many benefits of a video call is that you’ll be able to gauge more of their reaction as you ask them questions about their credentials or past work experiences. If a reference told you something negative about the physician you’re interviewing, now is the time to ask them about it.
Use The Same Locums
While many locums travel around the country, there are some locum physicians who live relatively close to the same area at all times. They choose to be a locum for the ease of setting their schedule instead of doing it for the travel benefits.
If there are locums that you’ve brought to work in your office and you were happy with their work performance, then bring them in again when you have an opening. This ongoing relationship will save you time in the future from needing to find new qualified locum physicians.
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