Working in locum tenens is great because you can take off as much time as you want in between assignments. However, it starts to become complicated once you spend more than 6 months to 1 year away from practice.
Even if you were secure in your skills, the challenging part is obtaining malpractice insurance once you have been away from practice for a while. Typically, the absolute maximum time you can be away from practice is 2 years before malpractice insurance will unlikely credential you.
There is a loophole with this, and that is finding a job with the federal government. The federal government considers itself as your malpractice insurance. This means that if you were to work at an Indian Health Services facility, Veteran Affairs, the military, or some FQHC clinics, you would not need your own malpractice insurance. So, if a patient from one of those work sites decides to sue you, it would go through the Attorney General.
Many states require nurse practitioners to carry malpractice insurance. Yet, there may be an exemption form you can complete which dictates that you practice exclusively as an employee for the federal government, so are exempt from carrying malpractice insurance.
I thought this was an interesting loophole and just wanted to share it with my readers.
