If you’re a provider looking into a locum tenens opportunity, consider this: There are significant benefits to working in urgent care. Compared with working in the emergency department, working in urgent care can be less stressful and decrease the risk of burnout.
Intense On-the-Job Training and Education
Working in an urgent care clinic after graduation enables you to get an amazing clinical education that prepares you for a wide variety of scenarios down the road.
Working in an urgent care clinic means seeing and treating a wide range of patient conditions and working under pressure. Though it’s intense, the extensive hands on training under the guidance of experienced urgent care providers will prepare new graduates for future challenges, and improve the skills of providers used to working in other departments.
Urgent care clinics have providers seeing patients with a variety of acute illnesses and injuries, exposing providers to a diverse array of medical conditions. This allows them to build experience in assessing and treating different cases, building their clinical decision making skills.
The fast-paced nature of an urgent care clinic ensures that providers will learn how to make quick assessments and treatment decisions and learn how to work under pressure.
Urgent care facilitates personalized, one-on-one interactions with patients while giving providers more time to speak with them compared to in an emergency department setting. This enables them to build their communication, bedside manner and ability to make decisions with their patient.
An urgent care setting also requires providers to frequently perform procedures like wound care, splinting and suturing. Practicing these skills in an urgent care clinic helps them providers confidence and competence.
Patient-Centered Approach That Improves Lives
Urgent care providers need to communicate with patients and gather relevant information to make timely diagnoses and treatment plans, ensuring that providers learn widely applicable skills in their urgent care job.
With a constant flow of patients with conditions varying in urgency, providers learn to quickly triage cases and prioritize based on severity- essential skills for any clinical setting.
Wide Range of Job Opportunities
Urgent care staffing shortages means that there are plenty of jobs available to providers looking for work in urgent care.
Urgent care physicians make salaries averaging $233,521 a year according to ZipRecruiter, and have plenty of job opportunities available to them.
The Urgent care PA profession is also growing, and ZipRecruiter estimated 37% growth for the profession from 2016 to 2026. According to ZipRecruiter, urgent care PAs earn $139,887 a year on average.
Urgent care NPs earn an average of $134,369 a year, according to ZipRecruiter.
Flexible Scheduling
Urgent care centers often have extended hours, and flexible scheduling allows healthcare providers to choose shifts that align with their preferences. This allows providers to gain a much better work life balance compared with a job working in the emergency department, increasing engagement and reducing burnout.
Lower Risk of Burnout
If you’re deciding between working in an emergency room versus in urgent care, factor in the emotional toll. The ER can provide a big adrenaline rush, but such high-stress work often leads to burnout over time. Urgent care clinics have a slower pace that can be a better match for some personalities.
Urgent care centers typically have a more controlled and predictable patient flow than emergency departments. Providers there don’t generally deal with life threatening conditions, allowing for a calmer and less chaotic environment. This lower intensity atmosphere reduces the emotional toll and stress on providers.
While still fast-paced, urgent care centers generally have lower patient volumes compared to emergency rooms. This allows providers to spend more quality time with each patient without feeling overwhelmed by excessive workloads.
The flexible scheduling offered by an urgent care job is a key factor in preventing burnout.
Urgent care settings foster the collaborative team environment of an emergency room, giving providers there the support provided by a team environment, but with less stress. Providers can also delegate paperwork to their staff, and focus more on providing quality healthcare to their patients
Working in urgent care can be a rewarding experience for a medical practitioner. You’ll have an opportunity to work on a variety of conditions, but with less stress and fewer hours than your emergency room counterparts. And with the current shortages in primary care, job opportunities in urgent care are growing every day.
Get Hired
Whether you’re already working in urgent care or are considering a career change, get a locum tenens job with Barton Associates!
Editor’s Note: This article was originally written by Stephanie Dube Dwilson, and was updated by Liliana French.
