Read time: 2.5 minutes
Everyone I know faces the following dilemma, whether they admit it or not:
Locum contracting VS Employment
More schedule flexibility, more pay for my time….but at the expense of security
More job security….but at the expense of my personal sovereignty
The problem with looking at the respective worlds in this way is that you trap yourself in a box.
– Everyone who has analyzed their options and chosen inaction, continuing to complain at the job that sucks them dry while working there.
– Everyone who has analyzed their options and chosen to stick it out solely in the locum arena, in spite of the stress inherent to short-term contracts.
There are no dilemmas in life.
There are always more than 2 choices. There is always something less extreme than what is readily apparent.
My hybrid evolution
The solution that works best for me now took some time to discover.
99% of the physician workforce lives a 1-dimensional career: they find a job and they work.
They don’t second-guess and they don’t try to find something better until they have to.
But some of us break out of that mold or we are in the 1% that wants for something more.
I knew I had to find something else when I looked to my left and to my right while working full-time at a quarternary care academic center in a major metro.
All I saw were the pale faces of peers with the same complaints day-in and day-out, but no desire to improve things.
Helpless.
I knew that life was no longer for me after 11 years of residency, fellowship, and attending.
And so my pendulum swung completely in the other direction: the salvation of locum contract work.
Contracts come and contracts go. Crazy things can happen.
The hybrid method
I wouldn’t allow the stresses of locum contract work to accumulate with time and gnaw at me like the stresses (albeit very different) of full-time, big hospital employment.
So I did something crazy.
I found a part-time job at the Veterans Health Administration.
It pays less, it requires off-hours.
But it’s a small monthly time commitment. And it’s a consistent paycheck. And I can get health insurance. And I’m helping veterans!
Not only that, but I’ve been successful keeping at least 2 locum contract opportunities going simultaneously for more than a year.
I don’t plan on stopping there.
The hybrid method is interweaving multiple complementary opportunities – whether w2 or 1099, local or travel, etc – to get the lowest stress end result possible.
The solution to the job security piece is to diversify your opportunities and what better way than a small piece coming from a biweekly paycheck?
But if that sounds anathema to your vision of total personal sovereignty, then make sure to have multiple locum contracts simultaneously to mitigate risk.
There is no one-size-fits-all approach to life
So stop trying to force yourself into a situation or a personality that doesn’t fit you.
Find your own path.
Take a hybrid approach.
Whenever you’re ready, here are 3 ways I can help:
1) Let’s talk through what choosing your own path through medicine looks like. Over the phone, confidential, free:
https://calendly.com/tonyvullo/20min
2) Free Guides and Resources to Help You Reclaim Your Time and Autonomy:
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