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Announcer:
Welcome to Spotlight on Locum Tenens on ReachMD. This episode is brought to you by Locumstory. Here’s your host, Dr. Charles Turck.

Dr. Turck:
Whatever dream you have of what you want your practice to look like, you can do. That’s what one clinician believes when it comes to beginning a career with locum tenens, and on today’s episode, we’ll learn more about his locum tenens journey and find out what he’s learned along the way. This is Spotlight on Locum Tenens on ReachMD. I’m Dr. Charles Turck, and joining me to explore the flexibility and variety that come with locum tenens work is OBGYN Dr. Derrick Barnes, who has affiliations with the Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula and the California Pacific Medical Center Van Ness Campus with Sutter Health. Dr. Barnes, welcome to the program.

Dr. Barnes:
Hi. It’s great to be here.

Dr. Turck:
Well, let’s start with some background, Dr. Barnes. Would you tell us about your locum tenens experience?

Dr. Barnes:
Certainly. So, I started doing locums about seven years ago. I was in private practice at that time in North Carolina and just basically answered an ad that said "Are you interested in doing some locums?" And so I looked at the position and thought this might be something interesting to do, so I called the company and had an interview and went out to visit the site and decided I’d like to start doing some locums on the weekends and just really enjoyed the experience. It was relieving to doctors that were overworked, it was close to my hometown at the time, and I got a great experience, and so since that time, I’ve been doing locum tenens at least as a part of my practice and plan to continue to do so as long as I’m in practice.

Dr. Turck:
And with that in mind, how might locum tenens offer variety for practicing clinicians?

Dr. Barnes:
There’s a great variety with doing locum tenens. If you’re in a job and you ever thought to yourself, I wonder what it would be like to practice X, you can fill in the blank. If you’re in a small city and you think you might like to practice in a larger city, or in a smaller city if you’re in a larger city, or if you wanted to try some rural medicine or working with residents, locums can offer whatever variety you’ve ever thought of and you can fulfill that need and you can get some experience.

Dr. Turck:
For those just joining us, this is Spotlight on Locum Tenens on ReachMD. I’m Dr. Charles Turck, and I’m speaking with Dr. Derrick Barnes about his experience with locum tenens work.

So, Dr. Barnes, if we switch gears a bit and focus on the flexibility provided by locum tenens work, would you tell us how this career path has given you an opportunity to spend more time with your family and have more of a work/life balance?

Dr. Barnes:
Yes. It’s been fantastic as far as being able to spend more time with my family. My children are homeschooled, and so they’re on a little bit different schedule than children that might be in school, and so we enjoy the outdoors, we enjoy traveling, and it’s nice to be able to travel off season. And it’s really nice when I’m doing a locum job to just be able to schedule months out when I’m just not working. I just tell them I’m not available and I can schedule to go on a trip with family. If my wife needs to go to a conference, I can just say ‘go to the conference.’ I don’t need to ask the hospital, look at my PTO, I don’t need to arrange coverage for myself. I simply just schedule it that way. So, it allows me to do the thing I enjoy the most, which is spend a lot of time with my family, do some traveling, and have a lot of flexibility in my schedule.

Dr. Turck:
I was wondering if you would take a moment to tell us a story about your most rewarding experience with locum tenens over the past seven years.

Dr. Barnes:
I think it’s just the variety of practice. It’s rewarding to be able to provide support to perhaps a smaller hospital or to physicians that are just burnt out and need some extra help, and they’re always welcome to have a new fresh face and bring some skills from maybe a different practice setting or a different hospital to their practice, and so it’s been great. I can remember one story in general, I was working in a very small hospital and had to transfer a patient out because the hospital did not have a lot of resources, and once I finished that job, I happened to rotate back on to a larger hospital in a bigger city in San Francisco, and I was able to actually take care of the patient that I transferred to the bigger city because I was now at the bigger hospital. And so that was incredibly rewarding, whereas, typically if you need to transfer a patient out, you don’t know what happens to them until they’re back home from the hospital or you’re reading a discharge summary, but I actually got to take care of the patient in two different hospitals throughout her hospital course, and that was incredibly rewarding to me.

Dr. Turck:
Now before we close, Dr. Barnes, is there anything else you’d like your colleagues to know about locum tenens?

Dr. Barnes:
Certainly. You know, I was sitting on a committee with some physicians one time in a hospital, and one of the older physicians, who I respect a lot, mentioned that he thought locums was for people who couldn’t hold down a permanent job, and I thought that couldn’t be further from the truth. And I spoke up and said locums is for people who are looking for different ways to practice. And I think if you’ve ever thought that you may want to practice in a different setting, maybe a different city, maybe just a different location or with some different people, I think locums is the perfect thing to do for you.

Dr. Turck:
Well, with those final thoughts in mind, I want to thank my guest, Dr. Derrick Barnes, for sharing his experiences with locum tenens work. Dr. Barnes, it was a pleasure having you on the program.

Dr. Barnes:
Thank you for having me. It’s been a pleasure.

Announcer:
This episode of Spotlight on Locum Tenens was brought to you by Locumstory. To access this and other episodes in this series, visit ReachMD.com/LocumTenens, where you can Be Part of the Knowledge. Thanks for listening!