If you are a doctor working as a locum there are advantages and disadvantages. One very big advantage is that you will earn more as a locum than as a practising doctor or hospital doctor, but then, on the other hand, the work can tend to be seasonal, and this means that you won’t always have a job to go to in the morning.

Some locums work only in general practice, some work in hospitals, and some work in both. In general, those who work in general practice are better off than those working in hospitals. This is because locums working in a hospital are employed on a salaried basis whereas locums working in general practice are usually technically self-employed. True, some locums in general practice are hired through an agency and that agency works on a similar basis to a hospital, but by and large locums in general practice receive their remuneration gross without any deductions for PAYE and national insurance.

This means that a locum in general practice can offset the amount of tax to be paid by claiming a wide range of expenses. Legitimate expenses include running a car, including fuel, servicing, road tax, and so on. One can also claim for telephone costs, printing, postage, stationery, accountant’s fees, etc. So, by being able to negotiate a higher remuneration than as a hospital locum or working full time as a GP, and at the same time claim much more for expenses, the general practice locum is considerably better off. However, one thing that should be noted is that a general practice locum will need to set up a pension scheme independently, whereas a hospital locum will have this built into the salary.

However, it is not all sweetness and light. Working as a locum means that the incumbent staff can often be hostile because they can see a locum doing much the same job as they do yet getting paid more for doing it. Indeed, one locum doctor remarked that a common occurrence is to hear “You won’t know because you’re only the locum”. Yet as he said, the irony is that as a locum you often see a wider spread of cases and management systems than those who are working in a speciality, and often in only one area, who seem to get tunnel vision.

Then there is an issue with patients who say that you are not their “real” doctor, and book to see “their own” doctor when he or she has returned to the practice.

There is an abundance of options that can provide locums with the chance of a potential principal post, an assistant’s post with the clinical commitment and lower level of management responsibility, or a retainer post with increasing flexible working arrangements and more time to spend with their family. They can branch out and do things that are not normally part of general practice but require medical training such as private and occupational health work and a clinical assistant position.

Overall, a locum in general practice will earn more and have a lot of options, together with more time freedom.

Of course, if you run a general practice and need to hire locums with all of that increased overhead, then you will need locum insurance for doctors. This is our speciality at Approachable Locum Insurance, as our name suggests. Each practice is different from the next one, and so we can tailor a locum insurance policy to cover your individual needs to include such things as jury service, maternity leave, bereavement leave, suspension, and so on, in addition to sickness and accident leave.