Remember back in the day when we had locums to fill in for doctors so that the service is not interrupted and junior doctors study time is not affected.
What are locums? Locum, short for the Latin phrase locum tenens (place-holder), is a person who temporarily fulfils the duties of another. There are on average 3500 locum doctors working in the NHS, many are supplied by private agencies.
In Brunei, there are no similar locum system. The ministry does not have a group of locum doctors to call on. Once in a whle we do get daily paid doctors far a few months to locum but we are not too sure of the real arrangement with the ministry.
Most times, the remaining doctors will have to pick up the slack and work extra on-calls, do extra clinics or be short-handed at clinics.
In private practice, some of us heard that private clinics employ locums from outside the country to work there when they go on holidays. We also heard a story whereby some of our seniors tried to locum for private clinics but it was not allowed due to the general order.
Do we need locums in Brunei? Will you do locums as a means to increase the take home pay? Let’s discuss this.

Next post will be on doctors doing private practice on the side. So keep those comments coming.