Locum tenens is usually described as an all-or-nothing choice: leave permanent employment and build a schedule out of shifts, or stay where you are. There's a third option. You can keep a permanent position, pick up a small amount of locum work, and find out what it's like before you decide anything.
This guide is for clinicians who want to test locum work that way. It covers what the options look like, what to expect from your first few shifts, and how to read the result.
Why Testing Locum Work First Makes Sense
The appeal of locum work is concrete: control over your schedule, a look at other practice environments, and some of the autonomy a permanent role can wear down. The concerns are just as concrete. What happens to your benefits? How steady is the income? What if you don't like it, or the time away strains things with your current employer?
A trial answers those questions with your own experience. One assignment, or a run of weekend shifts at a nearby clinic, shows you what locum work asks of you and what it gives back.
Three Ways to Test Locum Work
Which one fits depends on your employment contract, your role and your situation.
Extra Shifts Near Home
The lowest-risk start is picking up shifts at a non-competing facility near where you already work. That depends on your employment contract allowing outside work, so read it first. Some contracts restrict where else you can practice. Our guide to locum contracts covers how these agreements generally work, and an attorney can tell you what yours means.
These shifts add to your income and don't replace anything. You see a different team, a different EMR and a different patient volume with no change to your primary pay or benefits. You also learn what drew you to the idea: the schedule, the variety, the pace or the extra income.
Bridge Coverage Between Permanent Roles
If you've left one permanent position and haven't started the next, locum shifts can fill the gap. It's a good test because you get the full locum workload, including the paperwork, the onboarding at a new facility and the credentialing, without a permanent job competing for your attention. If it suits you, you can reconsider the next offer. If it doesn't, you've lost nothing.
Reduced Hours at Your Permanent Employer
Some employers offer part-time or reduced-FTE arrangements. Dropping to 0.6 or 0.8 FTE makes room for locum shifts while you keep your role and your working relationships. Whether your benefits carry over at reduced hours depends on the employer, so ask before you agree. Not every employer will say yes, and the same contract limits on outside work apply.
What to Expect From Your First Locum Shifts
The surprises on a first assignment are operational.
Credentialing takes time. Traditionally it's also repeated, because each agency and each facility runs its own process on its own timeline. Start well before the date you want to work. Our credentialing guide covers how it works.
You'll use a different EMR, or a different configuration of one you know. Budget attention for it on your first few shifts.
You'll carry more of your own admin. Taxes and malpractice coverage can work differently in locum work than they do when you're an employee, and the details depend on the arrangement. Ask how both are handled before you accept a shift, and take the tax questions to your own accountant. Our guides to locum taxes and malpractice coverage explain how each generally works.
Pay needs a careful comparison. A locum hourly rate isn't directly comparable to a salary, because the salary usually comes with benefits and paid time off. Work out both per clinical hour before you decide what a shift is worth to you.
Once you're working at more than one facility, managing multiple locum assignments covers the rules worth setting for yourself.
Going Back to Permanent Work
Returning to permanent employment after a trial is a legitimate outcome, and there are three common reasons for it.
You may find you miss continuity: knowing patients over time, a stable team, belonging to one place. You may find that what you wanted to leave was a specific employer, and a permanent role somewhere else on better terms is the fix. Or your life may change in a way that makes variable income or travel harder, like a new child, an aging parent, or a partner whose job ties you to one city.
None of these is final. A trial doesn't commit you to locum work, and it doesn't have to cost you your permanent role if you handle it openly and within your contract.
Signs Locum Work Fits You Long Term
The variety gives you energy. A new EMR, a new team and new routines every few months wear some clinicians out and suit others. If you're in the second group, that counts in favor of locum work.
You like the work without the organizational extras. Locum shifts come without committee assignments, performance reviews and internal politics. If the shift itself is the part of the job you want, locum work gives you more of it.
The numbers work for you. Run them for your own role and situation, including the benefits you'd fund yourself.
You need schedule control your employer can't give. That might be three weeks off when a parent is ill, or shifts front-loaded into one stretch with a long break after. Permanent roles rarely allow that. Locum work can.
Leaving a Permanent Role Cleanly
If the trial convinces you, how you leave matters for your references, for your options if you want to come back, and for your reputation locally. Give the notice your contract requires so your employer can arrange coverage. Hand off your work cleanly, and keep up your relationships with colleagues after you go.
If you leave on good terms, your former employer may later be a place where you pick up shifts. Building long-term facility relationships covers how to become someone a facility asks back.
What Makes a Locum Trial Cheap to Run
A trial costs the least when two things are true. You can see what a shift pays before you commit time to it, and your credentialing paperwork doesn't start over for each new facility. Check both before you choose how to find shifts.
A traditional agency with a recruiter is the better fit if you want someone else to arrange travel and housing for an assignment away from home. For shifts near home, a self-service marketplace lets you look at shifts and rates on your own schedule. Our guide to locum agencies covers how the agency model works.
Then start small: one assignment, close to home, on terms you can evaluate.
Rediworks is a self-service marketplace for urgent care shifts. The rate is shown on every listing before you apply, and the documents you upload to your credential wallet are reused at every facility on the platform. Sign up to see shifts.