What to expect on your first temp shift
Walking into an operatory you have never seen before is the hardest part of temping, and it gets much easier once you know what the first twenty minutes look like.
4 min readAug 2025
Before you arrive
The shift details in the app carry the address, the start time, and the name of the person meeting you. Give yourself fifteen minutes on the first visit to an unfamiliar office, since parking is the most common reason a first shift starts late.
The first twenty minutes
Ask for a quick tour of sterilization, the operatory you are working in, and where the emergency kit lives. Most offices expect this and it takes three minutes. Confirm how they chart and which software they run before the first patient sits down.