City Home Page: https://www.cityofsacramento.org/
Population: >500,000 (2021)
Locum Assignment: Pediatric Hospitalist (Quaternary Care, Managing High Acuity Patients; up to 40 overnight alone) [Most of 2022]
Restaurants/Things to Do: It’s the capital… There’s lots of things to do, apparently. But some highlights for locals is going up to the Mountains or down to the Bay Area.

Sacramento, somebody that I used to know…

In 2013 at the ripe age of 24 I packed my things and left the sunny state of California to head to New Orleans for Medical School. After that, the rest is history and eventually I became The Nomadic Pediatrician in 2020. In 2022, almost 10 years later, a job opportunity popped up to work as a Pediatric Hospitalist in Sacramento, California, a place I used to call home.

For my entire life before college, I grew up in a suburb of the capital of California called Roseville and went to high school at a well known college preparatory school called Jesuit. Through life circumstances I left but never thought I’d ever end up working there, let alone head back for more than a visit. In May of 2022, in order to be closer to visit family, I started working one weekend a month in the heart of Sacramento at a major quaternary care destination hospital for the region. It was busy beyond anything I had come across before with a peak number of patients for me to manage ALONE overnight of up to 30-40, in addition to admitting new patients in the Emergency Room and triaging phone calls for transfer from all over the region. That’s right, for anyone contemplating or curious about locum tenens: we are even needed for the best of the best places in big cities, there are endless opportunities, especially for places in growing phases of their lifespan…

Throughout my time there, I got to view my hometown as something different than I had growing up there for over 2 decades. As a new tourist in a foreign city, I explored the downtown area and saw things with fresh eyes. In the decade i’ve been gone, so much has changed and my memory is fuzzy. I worked tremendously hard at this locale and ultimately it was not the right fit for me, so I left in pursuit of other opportunities. Still, I mention this position so that others know that locums can help to place yourself near your family, they can be busy and exciting, and also the bittersweet truth that not all jobs are the perfect fit, and if something doesn’t fit, you should seek something that does. Still, it was a fantastic learning opportunity and absolutely humbling to take phone calls from friends in the area that were now local doctors that i had previously gone line dancing with a lifetime ago. It is no longer home, and I am but a visitor, but it was such a feeling of twilight seeing a place I used to know.

P.S. It was the best thing in the world to run into Dr. Schmalz, an ex-medical school classmate from NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA – what a small world.