08/29/2026
There comes a point in a surgeon's career when the question changes.
For years, the question is: How far can I take this?
You build programs. Take the call. Chase the RVUs. Serve as medical director. Take responsibility for more cases, more people and more of the institution. I did all of that. But later in my career, I started asking a different question:
How much of this do I still want? I wasn't ready to stop operating.
I still loved surgery. I still wanted to take care of patients. And after decades in medicine, I knew my experience could be valuable to hospitals that needed it.
What I didn't want was another five or ten years of the 6 AM to 10 PM grind just so I could keep being a surgeon.
Locums gave me another option. I've now performed surgery at roughly 15 different hospitals. I've covered programs that didn't have a surgeon. I've helped hospitals stabilize programs and brought experience into places that genuinely needed it.
But I also gained something I wanted more of at this stage of my life:
Control.
Control over when I work.
Control over how much call I take.
Control over when I travel.
Control over how much of my life medicine gets to consume.
I still get to be a cardiothoracic surgeon without needing my entire life to revolve around being an employed cardiothoracic surgeon.
If you're an experienced surgeon thinking about locums, start by asking yourself three practical questions:
1. What parts of being a surgeon do I actually want to keep?
Operating? Taking call? Teaching? Helping build programs?
Separate the work you still love from the obligations you've simply gotten used to carrying.
2. How much do I actually want to work?
Don't recreate your employed schedule as an independent physician.
Decide how many days or weeks you want to work each month, how much call you're willing to take and how much time you want protected for your family and your life.
3. Can I walk into a different hospital and adapt without compromising my standards?
You may not have your preferred instruments, team or routines.
You need to know what is personal preference, what is clinically necessary and when you're willing to say, “I can't safely operate under these conditions.”
Locums, for an experienced surgeon, can be a way to keep doing the part of medicine you spent decades mastering while finally having more control over the life around it. That's why I chose it.
