Welcome! We hope we can help you to
1) Connect with practices that need cover and
2) Provide opportunities to connect with colleagues for mutual support and shared learning.
We do this by managing this website where notifications of job adverts and required cover are continuously shared directly from practices, and through the website's GP-only forum as well as online and face to face educational meetings.
HOW TO REGISTER
Please have a look at our home page, all the information you require is there and a link to register as a locum is at the bottom.
To summarise, these are the steps
a) You register online
https://www.glasgowlocumgroup.org/register.php?t=locum
b) Locum GPs pay the yearly subs due every august, either via the paypal link (you can pay without a paypal account with your card) or by cheque, but activation of your membership takes place after the cheque is received so there is a slight delay.
c) We complete the necessary checks for your GMC status and acceptance onto an appropriate performers list.
Once these steps are complete, we activate your full membership (we aim to complete this within 5 working days of all steps being complete) and it is then your responsibility to check the jobs advertised on the discussion forum and keep your availability updated so that practices can contact you accordingly.
DISCUSSION BOARDS
There are Two Discussion Boards.
COMMUNICATION WITH PRACTICES
All practices can post their jobs on the discussion group or contact you directly, based on the details you provide.
If you update your Availability Calendar, practices will have a very clear idea of your availability.
That said, the vast majority of practices tend to request the required cover in an 'advert' via the discussion group on a daily basis- so we highly recommend you check this board regularly and better still, receive notifications from it directly to your inbox.
Furthermore, you can search through all advertised posts by searching the page - this is usually command F but might vary depending on your compute. If you opt-in (recommended), you will receive notifications of All jobs direct to your email.
IMPORTANT Please do not reply to the notifications that arrives in your email inbox.
You need to write directly to the practice via their recommended email or phone.
COMMUNICATION WITH PEERS AND COLLEAGUES
As above, the GP only 'discussion forum' posts here are visible Only to the GP membership - so feel free to connect through there. We also aim to provide other online or face to face opportunities to connect and network with colleagues for mutual support and shared learning.
TO RECEIVE VS TO STOP RECEIVING NOTIFICATIONS VIA EMAIL
You can opt out or opt in for email notifications when any discussion item is posted. Go to 'my profile' and select the relevant option under the drop down menu titled 'Discussion options'.
Practices and locums can also choose the option "yes, only replies to my postings" if they wish to limit notifications to replies for their own postings.
You will get one email notification for each new post if you opt in.
OUT OF HOURS
If you are interested in OOH, you can also contact GP out of hours admin team via https://gpjobs.scot/out-of-hours/. The phone number locally used to be 01416166215 and i think email is [email protected].
Hope that's helpful. Best of luck and we look forward to meeting you soon!
FURTHER INFORMATION
1. AVAILABILITY CALENDAR INFORMATION
Practices can see an availability calendar. When a practice makes a search over a series of dates, the system uses a "best fit" approach to find locums. It first selects those locums with an exact match for all the dates chosen. It then lists locums who are available on some of the dates, listing those who match best first. When two locums have an equal match, they are listed by most recently updated calendar. A series of "traffic light" red and green icons indicate which of the days the locum is available (green) or not available (red) with each box representing one day.
So in the above search for locums available for the 2 weeks starting 18/6, only the first locum listed (names/contact hidden in the image) is available on all the dates. The following 3 locums are only available on some of the chosen dates. The practice can "hover" their mouse over each icon to see the exact day to which the box corresponds (see image right).
The practice could now contact the first locum to offer them the full 2 weeks, or alternatively contact several of the locums further down the list in order to have cover for all of their selected dates.
Why do I still get calls from practices when I've marked myself as busy ?
You may have filled your calendar with numerous dates, but there may be a few you have left as available. If a practice were to enter one of these dates e.g. Sunday 4th August 07, you will be listed, as your calendar has this day marked as free.
In addition, if a practice selects a series of dates e.g. 18/6/15 to 29/6/15, the web page shows a 'best fit' list, starting with locums who are available on all these dates, then those who are available only on some of these dates. Even if it is only one of the days in the selected series, you will be listed (toward the bottom though). Those who have updated their calendar most recently are shown first if there is an equal match to the days selected.
The page the practices see uses a 'traffic light' set of icons to indicate daily availability within their selected range of days - a green icon is shown if the locum is available on day 'x', a red for each day they are not available. This shows the practice which of the selected days each locum is actually available. This allows them to contact locums who have an exact match for their days first, then only move down the list to those who part match, where they may have to book 2 or more locums to fill their date range.
Either of the above two circumstances would result in you 'being listed' when a practice makes a search. The practice should make judgement based on the 'traffic lights' as to whether to contact you to ask you to do a certain date - if you have 'red' for 8/10 of their dates, then they should know you are only available for 2 of their selected 10 days. See the question above for more details on how this all works.
If you don't want to be listed at all then you can make yourself 'inactive'. You wont appear in any searches until you make yourself 'active' again.
Making your calendar 'inactive' means will your name will not appear when practices do a search - you are automatically discarded from the search results before they are presented to the practice. You can turn the calendar back to 'active' when you want to be listed again.