How to bring a locum vet onto the practice rota.

A locum starts on Monday. They know the job, but not your practice: not where the controlled drugs are logged, not how you split consults, not who covers what on Saturday. If their arrival is sorted out by word of mouth, the next absence will be sorted out the same way. Here is a simple method for bringing a locum onto the rota without wearing down the team you already have.

Before day one: five things to gather.

A locum does not need much, but they need the right things in the right order. Collect them before they walk in, in a single document you can resend to every future locum.

• The dates, day by day, with start and finish times.
• The scope of the role: what they can do alone and what stays with a permanent vet.
• Duty shifts and on-call cover: whether they take part, and on what terms.
• A named contact: a name, a number, someone who answers during the day.
• The practice’s own rules: closures, rest after a duty shift, days that do not move.

The last point is the one most often forgotten. The practice’s rules already live in the team’s heads. For a locum they live nowhere until someone writes them down.

Setting the scope: a table before anything else.

A clear scope avoids two opposite mistakes: handing over too much too soon, or handing over nothing and exhausting your permanent vets. A one-page table is enough. Fill it in with the locum by phone before they arrive.

This table is not a contract. It is a basis for discussion that prevents misunderstandings on the first morning. Keep it with the month’s rota, because it belongs there.

Placing them on the rota without upsetting everyone else.

A locum fills a gap, but should not open another. Three habits help.

• Start with cover, not with people. Look at which time slots are genuinely uncovered, and only then at who can take them.
• Do not hand over everything nobody wants. Nights and weekends already cause friction. A locum who collects them leaves quickly, and the team notices.
• Keep your permanent vets in their rhythm. A locum is not a reason to move rest after a duty shift or days off already announced.

If you build the month by hand, note these choices next to the rota. If you use a tool, check that it holds your rules: Djed builds the whole month from the practice’s hard rules, such as days off, caps, rest after a duty shift and closures, which the solver cannot break. An exceptional time slot can be added on one given day, which suits a single day of cover.

Duty shifts: the delicate question.

Putting a locum into the duty rotation is the most sensitive decision. It touches fairness between permanent vets, the practice’s responsibility and the person’s real availability.

A clear rule beats an arrangement. Two choices are coherent. Either the locum takes no duty shifts and the permanent vets keep their usual rotation, or they take a number agreed in advance, written down, and the rotation takes it into account. Either way, avoid vagueness, because vagueness breeds resentment.

Think about fairness over time as well. If the locum takes two nights this month, the permanent vets should not end up with every night next month. Djed tracks each person’s load in days, Saturdays, Sundays, duty shifts and nights, and recalculates a fairness index with every adjustment, so you can see what a locum’s cover does to the rest of the team.

Day one: an hour that changes everything.

An hour well spent at the start saves phone calls all week. Set aside time with the named contact for a walk round the practice, an introduction to the team, and the three or four habits nobody could guess: where current cases are kept, how you phone a colleague, who tells the owner of a hospitalised animal.

Show them the rota itself. A locum who can see who works when, who is on duty and when the team is complete asks fewer questions, and better ones. If they can check their week on their phone, better still: the Djed iPhone app, in beta, shows their week, their duty shifts and their rest.

During the cover: watch the gaps.

Cover rarely runs exactly as planned. A sick day, an emergency that overruns, a permanent vet back early: all of it moves time slots. The right reflex is to return to the starting question, which is cover. Who is in at what time, and what is left uncovered?

When a change lands, decide quickly and tell everyone. In Djed, the copilot flags cover problems and the agent applies a change described in one sentence. A lock lets you freeze a day once it is settled, so a later adjustment does not undo it.

After they leave: close it properly.

• Record the days and duty shifts actually worked, not only those planned.
• Ask for three remarks: what helped, what was missing, what they would do differently.
• Update your welcome document with their answers.
• Check the permanent vets’ duty balance over the last twelve months.

It takes a quarter of an hour. It turns a cover arrangement you endured into a procedure the practice knows how to repeat, and the next locum arrives in better conditions.

In short.

Bringing a locum on board is mostly organisation: gather five things, write down the scope, decide duty shifts in advance, look after the first day and watch cover through the month. A tool helps you hold the rules, but clarity starts with what you write. If you would like to see how Djed builds a month from hard rules, the free trial lasts 14 days with no card needed. The app is in French for now.

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