City Home Page: La Crosse, WI
Population: 52, 185
Locum Assignment: Back-up Pediatric Hospitalist with Neonatal Nurse Practitioners ~1 week per month x 4 months
Restaurants/Things to Do: Dedicated post to outings and food in La Crosse to come!

On the eastern banks of the Mississippi river lies the town of La Crosse, Wisconsin. A college town, with the most bars per capita than any city in the US in the Driftless Area of the Midwest, this historic area is home to some amazing hikes, gorgeous views, and surprisingly some small and powerful health care systems. I never thought I’d have the honor to work with such a big name, but it was an honor to be part of the “effect” for the first few months of 2023.

Actually, the story was that in 2020 when I finished residency, I found myself living paycheck to paycheck waiting on finding work. The demand was low and more experienced providers with multiple state medical licenses were in the market soaking up all of the few jobs that there were. In hopes of being able to elevate myself to a similar level of competition with these veterans, I went through the laborious task of applying to multiple states for medical licenses on my own. For those unfamiliar with the process, many locum tenens agencies will help to sponsor and pay for these licenses, but in the market that was present in 2020, the time it took to wait on licensing a new provider wasn’t really worth it. So, to be aggressive, I looked for the states with the cheapest application fees and one of those ended up being Wisconsin. A mere $75 versus the $1200 that California wanted to charge, i figured, who knows what’ll happen?

Over the course of a few years, I found myself occasionally taking a telemedicine call for the state but it wasn’t until 2022 when i was offered a role to help a hospital in the state as it was working on it’s continued transition to a lower acuity nursery from the previous NICU world it held. The name was fun, the learning opportunity was fantastic, and of course, i said yes without hesitation.

In my time here, I met some of the nicest people, and was encouraged by a new Neonatology mentor (that I kind of self-proclaimed was my mentor…) to continue on my path of learning and self-growth. I spent hours listening to him recite historical facts of medicine and the world and also took some real estate advice to heart. Of the multitude of hospitals I’ve been privileged to work at, some of my most significant CME (continued medical education) came from this brilliant man. I watched guidelines and protocols and standards of care be followed at very high fidelity and was impressed with each interaction i had at the facility. It was an honor to work here, and I even made off with a jacket sporting the classic blue and 3 shields.