After nearly a decade of working at private dental practices, Dr. Christine Rizkalla felt unfulfilled in her life and career—stuck in a cycle of building her professional reputation and making more money. She loved dentistry, but she kept asking herself: “Is this really it? Is this what I’m supposed to be doing forever?”
Healthcare professionals choose locum tenens work for many reasons, whether that’s to have more time to volunteer, gain increased flexibility in their schedule, or travel the country. Rizkalla said she drew strength from her Christian faith, which led to her selling her equity in her practices to hit the road as a locum tenens provider and a volunteer dentist. Now, years later, Rizkalla has sold her home, car, and all of her belongings, donating half to charity to live as a nomadic dental professional, going wherever patients need her the most.
“There was one [Bible] verse that kept going through my head as I was making the decision [to go locum tenens] and it was ‘For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?’” said Rizkalla, the winner of Barton Associates’ 2024 Locum Heroes award. “I praise God for it because there was a [moment where I realized] ‘I gotta do this, and I gotta do this now.’”
Rizkalla’s willingness to give up her comfortable lifestyle demonstrates her selfless passion for locum tenens and volunteer work, qualities that set herself above the rest and earned her the title of Barton Associates’ 2024 Locum Hero.
“It’s very humbling—I don’t see myself as a hero,” Rizkalla said about being named this year’s Locum Hero. “As a healthcare professional, I believe that giving back to others is my duty. I hope this award will help raise awareness for the charities I support and my fellow volunteers.”
Rizkalla’s Locum Tenens Journey
When Rizkalla finished residency, she took her very first locum tenens position as a dentist in St. Mary’s, Pennsylvania after her brother, a physician, told her about locum tenens work. There, she said she learned how to be flexible as a healthcare professional when faced with new environments, different instruments, different personalities, and other challenges.
“It’s helped me grow as a person, too,” she said. “A, I’m never stagnant, [and] B, I’m able to see how to adapt to different people in different … places. It’s really helped, whether on a life standpoint or a work standpoint.”
Rizkalla completed a few locum tenens assignments in Pennsylvania, but soon decided to take her skills international and become a volunteer dentist at an HIV hospital in Kenya.
After that experience, Rizkalla sought calmness and stability, so she became a private practice dentist in Staten Island, New York and New Jersey. But it wasn’t long before she decided she wanted to return to her locum tenens and volunteer roots.
“I was pretty settled for about eight years,” Rizkalla said. “It’s very different, you have one aspect where you’re part of the community, you see your patients at the Italian deli and the doctor’s office … and then to pivot—it’s different but I love it. I love the capability of ‘I [can] always go back to private practice if I wanted to,’ although I don’t see myself doing that. I think this called me, not me calling it.”
It took about eight hours after she put her resume up online before a Barton Associates recruiter called her with a job opportunity. Within two weeks, Rizkalla was at the Quinault Indian Nation in Washington state, working as a locum tenens dentist.
“I fell in love there with the Pacific Northwest, the people of the Quinault Indian Nation, and the thought of being able to do something for other people,” she said.
Rizkalla believes that access to the highest standard of medical care shouldn’t be limited to fee-for-service offices or big cities, which is why she prefers to take locum tenens assignments in marginalized and underserved communities. In addition to working in Washington, she’s taken locum tenens assignments at Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) in Montana and Wisconsin.
“What I’ve noticed the most was, it’s not that they can’t find a dentist per se, but they can’t find a dentist that cares enough to treat them like they are a private patient,” she said. “And that’s something that really struck me and is one of the major reasons why I keep doing it. … I don’t care where you’re from or what you do, what race, gender, ethics, whatever it is—you are a human.”
This year, Rizkalla has worked a locum tenens assignment she secured with Barton in Wisconsin. She said Brandon, her recruiter who works out of Barton’s Windsor, Connecticut office, has been instrumental in helping her coordinate her plans.
“One of the special things about Brandon is he knows … I’m also a planner. You can’t live this kind of life unless you’re able to plan ahead or think ahead,” she said. “Brandon’s that guy that I ask him something and boom—done, finished. Like, I’m not even finished texting him … and we’re finished.”
She said one of the best parts about working with Barton is the personalized service that recruiters give to their providers when searching for relevant jobs.
“[Barton] knows where to send us and where we can be used the most, but also, I like not having to think so hard about things,” she said. “The thing I like about Barton is they allow me to just focus on the dentistry, and at the same time, there’s a big support [system].”
Volunteering Across the Globe
Between locum tenens assignments, and sometimes while she’s on one, Rizkalla makes sure to give back by taking on volunteering positions. All of these trips are funded with the money Rizkalla saves while working locum tenens assignments with Barton Associates. But volunteering isn’t new to Rizkalla—she’s been volunteering with her parents ever since she was a little girl, and she credits them for instilling in her a passion for helping others.
She’s taken some volunteer positions in the United States, such as in St. Augustine, Florida where she worked at a volunteer charity clinic, and at the St. Luke’s Free Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida, where she served as a founding member. Rizkalla also finds the time to do non-dentistry volunteer work, having traveled to Fort Myers, Florida on a weekend trip in 2022 to help cleanup from Hurricane Ian.
But Rizkalla has also taken her skills international, most recently taking a volunteer gig in Namibia where she gave general dentistry services to community members on a stage at a soup kitchen. She’s also involved with revamping an orphanage in the country—in fact, the volunteer organization she’s working with is trying to build more rooms for children there.
“These kids would come in from all over, they’d walk barefoot with just tupperware and as we’re doing dentistry on the stage, we’ve got another group of people doing medicine in a pharmacy, and then we have a soup kitchen part, and these kids are just looking for food,” she said.
In addition to volunteering in Namibia, Rizkalla’s taken trips to Kenya, where she worked with women who had been human trafficked and abused, guiding and training them with life skills, such as dental assisting, and build on skills they already have so they feel empowered to start their own businesses.
She also went on a solo mission to Egypt where she was tasked with setting up a functioning dental clinic in the middle of the Scetes desert. In just two months, she had sourced 500 toothbrushes, toothpaste, and floss; fixed the infrastructure; and set up a process for bringing in more dentists on a consistent basis to perform dental services free of charge.
In Quezon City in the Philippines, Rizkalla also helped set up a clinic in the middle of a street and inside a tiny church to provide dental treatment, conducting over 50 tooth extractions every single day.
This August, Rizkalla is returning to the Philippines where she’ll build upon where her volunteer group left off, providing dental services at the church while also visiting local schools to provide dental exams and immediate treatment to students who would otherwise have no access to quality care.
“I’ve been given these talents and I can either use them to grow more and to give back, or I can hoard them,” Rizkalla said. “I decided to use it to give back.”
Locum Hero
As Barton Associates 2024 Locum Hero, Rizkalla has been awarded $2,500 to send to a charity of her choice, as well as $2,500 for herself. To the surprise of no one, Rizkalla said she’s planning on giving both pots of money away to charity.
Specifically, Rizkalla plans on sending her awarded money to two 501(c)3 nonprofits that she is heavily involved in for volunteering and missionary work: the Department of Mission and Evangelism of the Coptic Orthodox Diocese of Los Angeles and the Coptic Medical Association of North America (CMANA). People who wish to donate can do so on the organizations’ websites.
“I am so thankful for all of the support that I have received from family, friends, and others along the way,” Rizkalla said. “Without them, none of this would be possible.”
Ultimately, Rizkalla said that she wants others to show kindness to everyone, no matter where you are.
“What I’d love for people to know is that a little bit of kindness goes a long way, and when you have the will to do something you will get it done,” Rizkalla said. “And that’s pretty much it—everyone needs a little bit of help, and it’s humbling that I get to be the one to do it in the name of just love, God, my charity, all of it.”
