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Medical Locums Jobs In Australia

Australia lies 33rd in a list of 121 countries of the world, in the global calculation of the doctor to population ratio. In Australia this ratio is 1 doctor per approximately 400 patients. This means that in their ranking order they are just below the United States, which has about 1 doctor to 390 patients, on a par with the Kyrgyz Republic (one of the 6 Turkic states), and Poland also at 400, and slightly above New Zealand at 420. Great Britain is just below that at 440.

Mongolias ratio of about 380 is better than that of Australia, as well as many of the European countries. It is also better than all the countries of the two American continents, apart from Uruguay and Argentina.

Most of the sub Saharan African countries lie between 2,500 and 50,000 patients per doctor, except South Africa, which has about a 1,300 ratio of patients per doctor.

Surprisingly enough, the country that heads the list and has the best doctor to patient ratio is Cuba, at about 1 doctor per 170 patients. Apart from Belgium, Greece, Italy, Iceland, Switzerland, Portugal, France, Germany, South Korea and Spain, the top 21 spots are all taken by the former Communist Bloc countries. That is, 11 of the top best doctor to patient ratios.

What does this mean for Australian hospitals and practices? In spite of the relatively poor showing in the ratios, the medical amenities are unquestionably first world, with cutting edge medical technology and research facilities. But for the doctors themselves it means long, long hours of hard work to keep up.

On top of this, the size and nature of the country of Australia sometimes makes it necessary for patients to travel long distances to see a doctor, and in some cases the doctors have to travel too. This means that the medical care system, of necessity, is thinly spread. Not every area has large groups of doctors who can cover for one another when one is sick or on leave.

This is why a service that selects, scrutinizes, and makes available locum doctors to relieve the overworked and overtired doctors of Australia is vital to the medical well being of the country. Some of these doctors are newly qualified, looking to gain experience. There may be some who took a year or two off to study further or specialize, and now want to get back into the job market. Others are prepared to come temporarily out of retirement, or perhaps some are mothers who took a sabbatical to get their small children off to a good start, and now wish to return to work.

Still others are new immigrants from other countries, where salaries and conditions are not up to the standards of those in Australia. In other words, they wish to better themselves and their families with a new job, a new life and a new country.

Whatever their reasons for seeking locum work, or new positions, in Australia they should be welcome additions to the active medical profession.

In recent years, locums have become a much more popular way to ensure easy and reliable medical recruitment particularly in rural areas of Australia.

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Medical Locums For Recruitment

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.

Outside of the medical profession many people have ever heard of the word locums before. But it is a proven way to provide efficient medical recruitment to rural areas in particular.

Medical Recruitment Through Locums

Medical Recruitment Through Locums

Locum jobs are temporary jobs that fill roles such as those on maternity leave and other short term absences. For a company having locum staff will mean that they don’t have the complications when their employees return but meanwhile have someone doing that job to ensure that their isn’t a hole in the service. Often medical companies will use locum staff so if a Nurse has been forced to take maternity leave then locum staff might come in to fill their place. Similarly locum medical staff could include anaesthetists, physicians or a range of other roles that are crucial for the medical facility to continue operating and offering its service to visitors. There are though also locum staff found in almost any industry and in a range of different businesses and organisations.

Locum staff are different from staff from temping agencies in a number of ways. For locum employees this is normally their full time job and they will have chosen to take on a locum position. Locum staff will also specialise in a single job role so that they are always filling the same position when they go between organisations. This means that unlike some temping staff, they will be highly trained and qualified for the position they are being called in to do, and this means that employers can ensure a high standard of performance particularly important in things like medical jobs which are highly skilled and hold a lot of responsibility. At the same time locum staff will have experienced starting a new job in a new organisation many times before so they should be adept at fitting in and getting on with your current staff.

For those thinking of becoming locum staff there are many advantages that make it a tempting prospect. For one, locum staff get paid slightly more normally than the regular staff for doing the same job. At the same time locum staff experience lots of different organisations and get to meat lots of people etc. They will not grow bored then of working in the same office day-in-day-out as they will always be able to look forward to moving on to the knew places. They also get time off often in between working at different locations and this is part of the reason for the higher salary. It can lead though to a slightly more relaxed pace of living.

However this of course comes with down sides too while short breaks are fine, if you go long periods without work this can be disconcerting, and at the same time it can be quite hard coming into new jobs when you are the only new member of staff and not staying for a long time as people may be reluctant to get to know you as you’re leaving and may even be resentful of your higher pay. Despite this, for many the pros outweigh the cons, and as such it is possible for businesses to find many locum staff for a range of roles and tasks should they need them.

There are lots of ways for medical recruitment agencies to find employees for their clients. One of them is to list with medical locums.

Hospitalist and locums.

We have had several Hospitalist physicians leave our practice. We have been bringing in locums to fill in for the same physicians. Now that 60 days is completed, we cannot bill the locums under the providers that have left. We have started credentialing the long term locums. My question is…..Can you bill a ‘temporary’ locum under a ‘long’ term locum since they are credentialed with the hospital, put not employees of the hospital? Has anyone else had this issue?

Medical Billing and Coding Forum