This week, August 10 through 14, marks the 10th annual National Locum Tenens Week. This year’s theme, “Temporary Providers, Permanent Impact,” is really just a formal way of saying what you already live every assignment: the work you do doesn’t feel temporary to the patients on the other side of it.
Ten Years, and You’re Still the Reason It Matters
National Locum Tenens Week, sponsored by NALTO, has reached its tenth year. A decade of assignments, relocations, unfamiliar EHR systems, and new teams learned in days instead of months. You know better than anyone what that decade has actually asked of you.
More than 56,000 clinicians took on locum tenens assignments last year, and 81% of US healthcare facilities relied on locum coverage. Behind those numbers are individual decisions: to pack up for a rural infusion center that needed a hematologist, to cover a radiation oncology department mid-quarter, to keep a surgical oncology schedule from slipping. Each one of those decisions kept a patient’s care on track.
What We See, Assignment After Assignment
We see oncologists learn a facility’s dosimetry protocols in days because a linear accelerator queue couldn’t wait. We see hematologists build trust with an outpatient team they’d never met, because continuity of care doesn’t pause for a staffing gap. We see surgical oncologists walk into an OR schedule built by someone else and hold it together without missing a resection date.
None of that is easy, and none of it is incidental. It’s the standard you hold yourselves to on every assignment, often without anyone outside the department noticing, because the whole point is that nothing looks disrupted. Patients keep their infusion appointments. Tumor boards keep their full bench. That’s you.
Thank You
This week is for you. Every medical oncologist, radiation oncologist, hematologist, surgical oncologist, and advanced practice provider who has said yes to a locum assignment this year, thank you. You showed up for departments that needed you, for patients you’d never met, and for care that couldn’t wait for a permanent hire.
Ten years in, the theme still holds: temporary providers, permanent impact. Thank you for yours.