It's 18 August 2011 and I am anxiously anticipating my journey to Yakima Washington. I have been working as a "locum tenens" (holding the place for you Latin scholars) physician part time for the past few years. This basically amounts to traveling to places that have a temporary shortage of physicians and filling in for varying amounts of time. I have been to several places in Maine, New Hampshire,and Vermont, usually for anywhere from a weekend to a couple of weeks. I did spend 2 months in Farmington Maine one time. It suits me well to do this kind of work. I can pick and choose the jobs and work as little or as much as I want to
Yakima will be for 3-6 months! It seems a little daunting to be setting off to a place a couple of thousand miles away for such a long span of time. Family,friends, and pets will be missed but I anticipate many visitors to my west coast habitat. The expected departure date is around 9/4 but may move up depending on the completion of credentialing. Credentialing, by the way, is a real complex and tedious process. The hiring facility is required to verify directly all your medical school, internships, residencies, and places you have ever worked since becoming a physician. In a case such as mine, having finished medical school 42 years ago, that is a lot of checking. They must contact the medical school and every hospital and clinic I have ever worked in directly and get verification that indeed I have done what is on my resume'. This must be done by the State of Washington(to obtain a license), the hospital where I will work and by the clinic that is hiring me. They are also doing a backgroubd check via fingerprints with the FBI and Washington State. We have been at it for two months and are almost there.
More to come as this develops.
