Our mission is to provide great locum pharmacists with the right chemistry to our customers, the pharmacies; i.e. locums who will deliver an outstanding service to the pharmacy’s.
We hope you agree that we provide a great service to you our locums–that’s what we try to do. But a vital part of our mission to give a great service to customers lies in your hands.
As we’ve been booking locums for over 16 years we feel as though we have learned a thing or two about what makes a great locum & how to obtain more work. We wanted to share with you some tips.
Don’t cancel
Only take the bookings you can fulfil, the beauty of being a locum is you choose when you work, but once you have accepted a booking you must follow it through. Always consider your holidays, appointments & leisure time in advance. If you decide to take a permanent job, please bear in mind any existing bookings and let this be known at interview stage, don’t let your customer down (Its possible you may come back to do locum work)
Be sure to get great feedback
By doing a great job and getting good feedback, you will get more booking offers here. See our blog for more tips on getting good feedback. “How to get great feedback”
Keep us informed
Its vital that you maintain your diary well in advance, at least 6 months, so that when customers add their vacancies online your availability is shown and we can send you offers
Make sure we have your latest documentation, services, insurance etc.
Flexibility
Occasionally customers will ask you to change the location of your booking (within reason) by agreeing to this you are building a great reputation for yourself that they will remember and want to book you again
Be available in the summer time
This is always the key time to be available, if you don’t have restrictions we suggest taking holidays in winter and you can make extra money by being available for work throughout the summer which is generally May-August
Be prepared
Breakdown cover, a satnav and a functional spare tyre are all essential. This is even more important in winter, please see Amy’s blog on “being prepared for a breakdown” A smart phone with google maps is recommended for when you’re locating the branch on foot.
Be punctual
A really important factor to delivering a good service is punctuality. We give you as much information as we can in your diary about each booking, so you can effectively plan your journey to arrive on time, preferable 10 minutes early so you’re ready to start when the branch opens.
We understand that sometimes things outside of our control cause us to be late but in these circumstances, we ask that you call us as soon as you suspect you’ll be late, let us know why and keep us updated as much as possible so we can let the company know.
*As you can imagine, if they have to call us 20 minutes after opening to say you haven’t arrived, not only will they be very anxious about losing business, but it also doesn’t reflect favourably on either you or our agency.
Services
With the increasing emphasis on providing health care to patients in pharmacies the importance of locums gaining accreditations to provide services has also increased. The more services you can provide the better. We provide you with an online tool to check what services are in demand locally in your diary.
SOPs
Most locum pharmacists make a point of being fully briefed on the pharmacies’ SOPs and we fully support this; periodically an issue arises concerning this subject, so we stress its importance. Do take care to attend to this especially when visiting new customers.
Thanks for taking the time to read our blog we really hope it is useful for you.