Dr Chok & Dr Diana on locuming as a couple

Dr Diana Yuen Kwun Ng and Dr Chok Chan are resident doctors in Australia (or house officers New Zealand. Recently, they have been locuming in Australia as a couple. We caught up with them for a chat about their experiences.

How did you find Medrecruit?

Chok: We chose to get involved with Medrecruit because it was a very good company. It was a very straightforward process in terms of getting recruited and finding a job here in Australia to locum.

We wanted to find out a little bit more about the Australian health care system then work here a bit, and also see a bit more of Australia, Medrecruit helped us achieve this.

Can you tell us a bit about your experience locuming?

Diana: So Medrecruit has been really helpful, we talked to a few other companies, but they just weren’t as personable in terms of trying to find the correct job type for us. Medrecruit was really flexible they gave us time to decide when we could start work, and when we wanted to finish, so we could do a little bit of travelling in between.

They were good at giving us a few days off at a time during the current job that we have to make sure that we get enough time for work/life balance.

Chok: They have also been really good at talking with the employer and negotiating what shifts we have and they have been able to put our shifts together so that’s been very good for us. We do the process together and we can fill in all the paperwork together, and it’s quite a smooth process being able to go through one agent. Being able to work in the same hospital allows us the have the same shifts and the same days off and that allows us to have greater flexibility.

What do you want to see in 2023?

Diana: My goal heading into the New Year is that I am going back to New Zealand to start my radiology training.

Chok: My goal for next year is to start my training in internal medicine and we have both got registrar jobs lined up for us, but before that, we would really like to travel around (maybe explore Europe a bit before starting).

Diana: Medrecruit has been good for giving us a break from full-time work because we are going into full-time work so this has given us a couple of months to work a little bit to help fund our travels and give us a bit of flexibility to take some time off and really recharge before we start training.