Five things: that the registration is current, that it covers the work, that the dates and rate are agreed in writing before the shift, who is clinically responsible, and how cancellation is handled.
Ask for the registration number and confirm it against the State Medical Council register. A screenshot is not a check. This is the one item that cannot be taken on trust, because it is the one that decides whether the doctor may lawfully do the work at all.
On Rounds this is already done: a doctor cannot appear for a shift until their registration has been checked against NMC records.
Registration is issued by a State Medical Council, and councils differ on practice across state lines. For cover at a hospital in a different state from the doctor's registration, confirm the position before the shift rather than after it.
The start, the end, the hours and the amount should all be settled before the doctor travels. Most disputes about locum work are not clinical; they are about what was agreed, recorded nowhere, and remembered differently.
On Rounds all four are on the shift before it is accepted, and both sides see the same record afterwards.
A locum is an independent professional, not an employee, and the hospital remains responsible for the arrangements around the care it provides, supervision, escalation, and who the doctor calls at three in the morning. Say who that is before the shift starts.
Cover falls through. A doctor is ill, a hospital's own consultant returns early. Agree in advance how much notice each side gives and what happens to the fee, because the time to settle it is not the night it happens.
Every registration checked against NMC records. Zero commission, the hospital pays the doctor directly.
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