Life of a New Zealand Locum Tenens

http://www.gmedical.com/ — Wed, 05 Jul 2006 15:42:00 -0600

You might say Roger B. Johnson, MD, was born to travel. From his first venture overseasattending Ludwig-Maximillian University in Munich, Germany, as an exchange student from 1966 to 1967to his return engagements at the Maniilaq Association Health Center in Kotzebue, Alaska, to his current 3-month opportunity in New Zealand, he estimates he has accepted 50 national and international contracts, through agencies and independently, since beginning his locum tenens career 21 years ago.

No stranger to diverse cultures, Dr. Johnson spent a year at the University of Philippines School of Medicine in Malata, Manila, before receiving his medical degree from the University of Kansas in 1971. Over the next 2 years, he completed a rotating internship, short fellowship in tropical diseases, and surgical residency at a U.S. Army hospital in the Panama Canal Zone, remaining as its staff physician until 1975. After relocating for 3 years to a field hospital in Zaire, now the Republic of Congo, Africa, with the Paul Carlson Foundation, he then returned to the Panama facility's family practice clinic, until 1984 when he left the Canal Zone to consider other career alternatives. Not surprisingly, the freedom and flexibility of locum tenens practice beckoned, and he accepted the first of several locum tenens contracts through Salt Lake City, Utah-based CompHealth in February 1985.

"Growing up in Kansas, I am a farm boy at heart. When I came back to the States, I wanted time to raise hay, wheat, and some organic crops and cattle on my 530-acre farm, but I still wanted to practice medicine. Locum tenens allows me the freedom to set my schedule so I can provide services anywhere from 4 to 8 months a year and still be available for farming from May to November. So far, I have accepted opportunities in Idaho; Indiana; Illinois; Maine; Montana; Alabama; Missouri; Kansas; Alaska; Zaire, Africa; and New Zealand.

"The advantage to utilizing agency services," he continues, "is that on many occasions, you have more options than when you are selecting opportunities independently. With a staffing company, you can choose the type of practice situation you would prefer, as well as the geographic locale. Representatives also set up housing, rental cars, and transportation for you. I believe that was very valuable to me in my first 7 years of locum tenens practice. With my recruiter's help, I experienced every variety of clinical environment imaginable in the U.S. During those years, I often chose two contractsone agency-based, one independentannually. Since the mid-1990s, I have concentrated primarily on negotiating private contracts."