A locum is a person who will work in the place of another person when that person is not available or if a firm or company is short of staff. In this case, medical locum for recruitment will be medical doctors who will locum in another doctors place if that the doctor is on leave or on a course or if the hospital or doctors rooms are short of staff. The word locum is used widely in New Zealand, Australia, Canada, South Africa, United Kingdom and Malaysia. In each case, these locums are still governed by their respective professional, regulatory bodies.

As in all cases, hiring a medical locum as a stand in can have advantages as well as disadvantages. The company requiring the locum will have to provide a salary as well as an accommodation to the person who will come to locum keeping in mind that the other person who is on leave or attending a conference is also still receiving a salary. The advantage for the person who does the locum is that he/she will get to expand their knowledge in a wide field, which they may not have been able to do if stuck in one place. It also takes you places if you can locum at different places.

The medical locums for recruitment can be found at quite a few places for instance freshly graduated doctors can be approached, a wide variety of recruitment agencies can be approached, or an advertisement can be placed in medical school journals. Some hospitals also have placement agencies and may have doctors on their books available for locum it is another option to look at when looking to recruit a locum or for a locum to consider when looking to locum somewhere. Then there is always the regular locum who has been used by a private practice more than once – enquire from that practice as they will already know the locum and can do the necessary recommendations.

People who are the ideal candidate for medical locums is the ones who would like to have a change of scenery on a regular basis, who would like to work flexible hours, who want to inject new energy into their career or who would like to explore the world. Institutions looking for medical locums will be able to acquire extra hands and also inject new blood into the system.

However, not all medical locums for recruitment are as they seem horror stories have been told by some places where locums have worked, especially in the third-world countries where locums are sometimes not that well trained. Ensure that the locums paperwork is in order as required by your country; otherwise, you may have a problem. Similarly, not all places where locums have worked turned out to be what they advertised to be. It is, therefore, essential for both locums as well as potential places, which are recruiting locums should make sure that both know what they want and what it is they are going to get.