Physician burnout is measured every year, and the numbers are high. In the American Medical Association's 2023 survey of more than 12,400 physicians at 81 health systems and organizations, 48.2% reported at least one symptom of burnout, down from 53% the year before. That is an improvement, and it still describes nearly half of the physicians surveyed.
Some physicians respond by changing how they're employed. Locum tenens work, where you choose shifts instead of holding a fixed schedule, is one way to do that. This post looks at what locum work changes about the conditions tied to physician burnout, what it leaves in place, and what it adds.
What physicians say is behind burnout
The same AMA survey asked about the sources of job stress. More than one-quarter of respondents said they didn't have enough physicians and support staff, and 12.7% pointed to too many administrative tasks. Both are features of the workplace and the job design, and neither is about the clinical work with patients.
That distinction shapes what a physician can do about burnout. Seeing fewer patients doesn't fix a clinic that's short two medical assistants. A wellness program doesn't shorten the inbox. The levers that match these causes are structural: who controls the schedule, how much non-clinical work is attached to the job, and whether you can leave a workplace that isn't functioning.
How physician employment has changed
Fewer physicians control those levers than a decade ago. Between 2012 and 2024, the share of physicians working in private practice fell from 60.1% to 42.2%, where private practice means a practice wholly owned by physicians. Over the same period the share working in hospital-owned practices rose from 23.4% to 34.5%.
An employed physician generally doesn't set the schedule template, choose the EMR, or decide how many support staff are on a shift. Those decisions sit with the organization. An employed physician who is unhappy with them can ask for changes, wait, or resign, and resigning from a permanent job is slow and costly.
What locum tenens work changes for a burned-out physician
Locum tenens work moves some of those decisions back to the physician.
You set the schedule. A locum physician picks shifts. You can work a heavy month and a light one, or take three weeks off, without a request or an approval. For a physician whose burnout is tied to having no say over time, this is the largest change.
The job is the shift. A locum physician isn't on the clinic's committees and doesn't have quarterly reviews or department meetings. The obligations begin and end with the shifts you've accepted.
Leaving is simple. If a clinic is badly run or chronically short-staffed, you don't book another shift there. There's no notice period to serve and no resignation to negotiate. That also makes it possible to find the clinics that run well and keep going back to them.
Urgent care has a defined day. A clinic that closes in the evening has no overnight call and no inpatient census to carry home. That's true for employed urgent care physicians too, and it's part of why urgent care suits shift-by-shift work.
What locum tenens doesn't change about physician burnout
Locum work is a change of employment structure. It isn't a treatment, and several of the conditions behind physician burnout come with you.
Charting stays. Every patient still needs a note, and a locum physician is often writing it in an unfamiliar EMR. The documentation inside a shift isn't lighter, and on a first shift at a new clinic it's slower.
Staffing is whatever the clinic has. If a clinic is short on support staff, the locum physician covering that shift works short too. You can choose not to return. You can't fix it from inside one shift.
Patient relationships are brief. Urgent care is episodic for everyone, so this matters less here than in primary care. A physician whose satisfaction comes from following patients over years won't find that in locum shifts.
New administrative work appears. State licenses, a credential file for each agency or platform, and your own benefits become your responsibility. If your income is self-employment income, so do quarterly estimated taxes. The committee meetings go away and paperwork you manage yourself takes their place.
Income varies. A paycheck that changes with the shifts you book is its own source of stress, especially in the first months. Our guide to how locum tenens physician pay works shows how to compare an hourly rate with a salary before you make the move.
Locum tenens work helps most when the cause of burnout is control over your time or a specific workplace. It helps least when the cause is the documentation load itself or the pace of the clinical day, because those are the same on a locum shift.
Testing locum work before leaving a permanent job
A physician doesn't have to resign to find out whether locum work helps. Picking up one or two urgent care shifts a month alongside a permanent job shows you what the work is like at low risk. Check your employment agreement first, since some restrict outside clinical work.
If you do that, pay attention to what changes. Whether you dread the shift less when you chose it, and whether the clinic's staffing makes the day easier or harder, will tell you more than any survey. Our guide to moving from permanent to locum work and back covers the steps.
Physicians who move fully to locum work can overbook, and a calendar with no days off produces the same exhaustion under a different contract. Our post on managing multiple locum assignments without burnout covers how to set limits when nobody else is setting them.
See what urgent care shifts look like
Rediworks is a self-service marketplace for urgent care shifts. Each listing shows the rate, location, shift length and facility before you apply, and you pick the shifts that fit your month. Sign up to see shifts.