How to Write a Dental Locum Booking Request

Around half of unfilled locum requests fail for reasons the practice controls: missing details that force back-and-forth, filters that quietly shrink the audience to a handful of people, or a rate pitched below what nearby practices are paying. The good news is that a well-built request is a five-minute job, and it changes your fill rate more than anything else you can do.

A complete dental locum booking request includes the date, start and finish times, the role, the hourly rate, essential clinical skills only, parking arrangements, and who to ask for on arrival.

This guide covers what to include, the filtering mistake that kills more requests than anything else, what belongs in the booking confirmation so there are no disputes later, and how to share practice details without a chain of emails.

What to include in every locum booking request

A locum deciding whether to accept your shift is doing quick mental maths: can I get there, is the rate fair, do I have the skills, and will I know what I’m doing when I walk in? A request that answers all four gets accepted without a single question back. Include:

• The when. Exact date, start time, and finish time, including the lunch arrangement. "Full day" means different things at different practices.
• The role and the day’s work. Nurse, hygienist, therapist, dentist, or receptionist, plus the type of clinic they’ll support. A nurse walking into an implant list wants to know before they accept, not after.
• The hourly rate. State it plainly. A rate £2-3 above the local average routinely fills in minutes; a rate below it sits unfilled while nearby practices take the available locums.
• Essential skills only. The skills genuinely required for the day, and nothing else. Decontamination, ortho nursing qualified, implant qualified, sedation. Every skill you tick removes locums who could otherwise accept.
• Arrival details. Parking or nearest transport, who to ask for at the door, and anything unusual about the building. These three lines prevent the 8.55am phone call.

The mistake that kills more requests than anything else

The most common reason a request goes unfilled is not a shortage of locums. It is over-filtering. A practice in a well-supplied city might have 140 available locums in its search results, then apply a tight price cap, three skill requirements, and a short travel radius, and end up sending the request to 5 people. If those 5 are busy, the shift fails, even though 135 potential candidates never saw it.

On Airlocum, the first locum to accept secures the shift and the request closes automatically, so sending to more locums carries no downside. Practices that send requests to 30 or more suitable locums routinely fill shifts in under 15 minutes.

The discipline is simple: filter on what the day genuinely requires, and let distance and rate do the rest. If you want control over who works in your practice, that’s what a favourites list is for. With "My Favourites first", your request goes to your approved locums for the first 15 minutes, then automatically widens to the full pool if none of them accepts. You get first refusal for the people you trust without gambling the whole shift on their availability.

One more reason not to over-filter: your filters carry over into any automatic rebooking. If your original search was narrow and your locum later cancels, the replacement search inherits the same narrow audience.

Last-minute requests: what the locum needs to arrive prepared

When the shift is today, the locum has no time to ring ahead. Everything they need has to be in the request and your practice profile:

• The software you run, so they can mentally prepare or flag they’ll need a quick orientation.
• What the day looks like: general list, hygiene day, implant clinic, reception cover.
• Any compliance expectations for the role, such as decontamination duties for a nurse.
• Where to park, parking cost for the day, which entrance to use, and the name of the person to ask for.
• Dress code and what to bring, if your practice has specific requirements.

Practices that keep this information in their practice profile never have to type it twice: it travels with every booking automatically. On Airlocum you’ll also see when your locum is on their way on the day, which replaces the anxious clock-watching that last-minute cover usually involves.

What should be in the booking confirmation

Disputes after a locum shift almost always trace back to something that was agreed verbally and recorded nowhere: the finish time, the lunch break, the rate. A proper booking confirmation removes the ambiguity. It should record the date, start and finish times, the agreed hourly rate, the role, the essential skills requested, the practice address, and the cancellation terms both sides signed up to.

On a direct-booking platform this happens automatically: the confirmation is generated from the request the moment a locum accepts, both sides see the same document, and the timesheet submitted after the shift confirms the hours actually worked against it. No email trail to reconstruct, no "but we agreed on the phone".

Sharing practice details without endless emails

The safest way to share practice information with a locum is not email at all. Email chains scatter your address, door codes, and day plans across inboxes you don’t control, and every new booking starts the chain again.

The better pattern is to write it once. Complete your practice profile with your description, software, parking, and arrival instructions, and every locum who accepts a booking sees it automatically, inside their account, only after the booking is confirmed. Nothing to resend, nothing sitting in a stranger’s inbox, and every locum arrives with the same information.

The takeaway

A booking request is a small piece of writing with an outsized effect on whether your chair stays open. Give the locum the four things they need to say yes, filter only on what the day truly requires, send wide, and let your practice profile carry the details you’d otherwise type into email after email.

Airlocum is a dental staffing platform, not an agency: post your shift, set your rate, and GDC-verified, Enhanced DBS-checked locums accept directly, with the confirmation and paper trail handled for you. Post your first shift at airlocum.co.uk.