Locuming as a Consultant: Which Specialty Has the Most Work?

If you're working as a locum consultant, you may be interested in keeping up with which specialties tend to offer the most work. Here at Messly, we help doctors find locum work from the very best locum agencies. In 2021, we saw over 40,000 individual locum jobs offered on our platform, almost 6,600 of which were for consultants.

To help you understan which specialties offer the most job opportunities for locum consultants, we’ve done a deep dive into the stats and crunched the numbers for you here.

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🧮  The Data

In total there were 6,594 Locum Consultant jobs added to Messly in 2021, over 58 different specialties and sub-specialties. We've broken this down in the chart below for you.

Here, you can see the exact number of jobs that were available within each specialty by tapping or hovering your mouse over the graph.

Be aware these numbers are based on the data we collected from the Messly service, and so the total number within each speciality, although proportionately reflective, will be higher.

Locum Consultant Jobs by Specialty

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This chart only includes specialties which had a minimum of 100 UK based jobs in 2021.

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The specialties with the most work available

As you can see, General Medicine is the specialty with the most work available for consultants, accounting for 9% of all consultant jobs across the 58 specialties and sub-specialties on the Messly platform.

General Psychiatry and Anaesthetics are the specialties with the next highest volume of work. These three specialties added together account for almost a quarter (24%) of all the available consultant locum work in 2021.

When compared to the same data for SHO locum work as well as SpR locum work, the spread of jobs across the various specialties is a bit more even for consultants.

The specialties with the least work available

The specialties with the least amount of locum work for consultants are Allergy Medicine, Nuclear Medicine, Occupational Medicine, Paediatric Surgery, and Immunology.

Together, these accounted for less than 1% of all available locum jobs on our platform.

If you're looking to go into certain sub-specialties, you may want to consider adapting your search to include more general speciality shifts in order to secure more regular work for yourself.

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We've also provided a similar analysis of which regions across the UK have the most work for locum consultants. You can have a look at that here.

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✨  Our Tips For Securing More Locum Work

Working as a locum doctor can be tough if you find yourself in a position where you need to work more regularly than you're currently able to. Whether you're looking to earn more money, or just want to be working on a more regular basis, here are some helpful tips to increase your locum opportunities.

Be as flexible as possible

When it comes to locuming, the more flexible you can be the better. If you’re willing to work anti-social hours, such as weekends, night shifts, and on-call shifts, you’ll be able to find more work. You’ll also be in higher demand as a locum, which will allow you to command higher rates for your services.

Being flexible with the locations you work in will also give you a wider range of job opportunities, as you'll have more areas to choose from.

Make sure your CV stands out

If you want to succeed as a locum, one of the most important things to do is ensure your CV stands out from the competition. Make sure your CV is fully up-to-date, and always tailor it to be specific to each role and specialty you're applying for at the time.

As doctors, most of us tend to be quite poor at writing CVs, so to make this easier for you we've produced a detailed guide to writing an outstanding CV for locum doctors.

Cast a wider net

An easy way to tap into a wider range of locum shifts is to work with a number of different locum recruitment agencies and staff banks.

Each agency will have slightly different access to shifts and hospitals, so we’d recommend signing up to at least two or three to have plenty of choice. It’s also a good idea to join one or two staff banks. Locum shifts with staff banks tend to be more ad-hoc, but they'll still give you a chance to pick up some extra local shifts any time the number of opportunities your agencies provide temporarily falls.

For a full deep dive into how to maximise your locum rates, read our related article here.

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🎯  How Messly Can Help

Messly is a faster, simpler, and more transparent way to find locum work. We make the very best locum agencies compete to find you the work you want.

How does it work? Firstly, you create your profile in the app, and specify exactly what kind of locum work you want, what rates you expect, how far you’ll travel, whether you’ll work anti-social hours, and more. It works for doctors of all grades, across the whole of the UK, for work in the NHS and private sectors.

You’ll then receive offers of locum work from locum agencies. You see real shifts with hospital details, rates, and rotas, all matched specifically to your preferences, plus ratings of those agencies from other doctors.

You can then choose which shifts you want to accept, using the app to compare rates and travel distances, and reading the recruiters’ pitches to you.

When you see an opportunity you like, you can then schedule a convenient time to speak to the agency. Only then do you share your contact information, and only ever with the agencies you’ve selected, so you won’t get any unwanted emails or phone calls.

We’ll then help you through the registration process, so you can start working quickly and without any hassle.

By giving you access to locum work from all the best agencies, you stand a much better chance of earning the highest rates, with less travel, and your pick of departments.

To learn more, or to get started, check out our locum service here.

🔎  Notes on Methodology

The data above is based on an analysis of locum jobs added to Messly since January 1, 2021. Jobs are only added by pre-vetted locum agencies who have been approved to join Messly. Each job is added with a lower rate and upper rate to show the range within which the job pays.

Before jobs are added to Messly, they're checked by our team, and erroneous rates are investigated so jobs can be removed if their rates can't be verified.

The data in this chart shows the average of the lower and upper rates, to give the most common pay range available for each specialty.

Only specialties with more than 100 shifts have been added to the chart. GP data is not included due to our low sample size.

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This article is part of our Locum Data Hub, a collection of data-driven guides and resources that explore the numbers behind locuming, helping you solve challenges with things such as pay, budgeting, job searches, and much more.

For a comprehensive list of articles designed to support you as a locum doctor, visit our Locum Doctor Hub for everything you need to know about locuming today. Covering areas such as getting started as a locum, finances, understanding your rights, and many more.

Additionally, if you're considering an F3 year, you might also find it useful to look through the selection of resources we've put together in our F3 Resource Hub.

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