Seven ways a Malaysian locum shift gets priced

"RM40 an hour" makes locum pay sound like one thing. In ~150 real locum posts from a Selangor/KL Telegram group, 26–27 June 2026, we counted seven distinct ways a shift gets priced — and which one you're being offered changes what the shift is worth far more than the headline number does.

1. Flat hourly

RM40/hour. The majority, and the easiest to compare. Hours × rate. If every posting looked like this, nobody would need this article.

2. Fixed session or overnight

RM300/night. RM250/shift. RM360 for an ON. Priced whole, not by the hour. The number that matters here is one the post often doesn't give you: how long the shift actually runs. RM300 across eight hours and RM300 across twelve are not the same offer.

3. Split shift

RM45/hour from 8am to 11pm, then RM300 for 11pm–8am. One slot, two pricing regimes, because the night is a different job. Work out both halves separately before you agree.

4. Tiered by patient count

1–15 patients RM40/hour, 16–30 RM45, 31+ RM50. Or overnight: under 5 patients RM200, under 10 RM250, over 10 RM300. The clinic is sharing volume risk with you. It's fair, and it means your pay isn't knowable in advance — ask what a normal day looks like, and treat the bottom tier as the number you might actually get.

5. Hourly plus an overnight top-up

RM40/hour until 11pm, plus RM250 for the overnight — "total RM370". Watch the total: it's the clinic's arithmetic, and it assumes a particular number of hours before the top-up kicks in. Redo it with your own.

6. Commission or percentage

35% of sales. 5% commission if sales exceed RM500. Most common in dental. This isn't really a locum rate, it's a revenue share — your pay depends on what walks through the door and what it buys. A quiet day can pay very little.

7. Rate-or-commission, whichever is higher

"RM35/hour or 35%, whichever higher." A floor plus upside. Better than pure commission because the floor is real — but note the floor is often set *below* the flat-hourly norm, which is the trade you're making for the upside.

Why this matters more than the number

Two postings both saying "RM40/hour" can differ by a third in actual pay once you count structure, incentives and load. Comparing headline rates across seven structures isn't laziness on the reader's part — it's genuinely hard, and it's why the group chat makes people take worse shifts than they meant to.

On LocumMY a posting carries one plain headline rate you can sort and filter on, with the rest — the incentives, the tiers, the conditions — written out separately in the clinic's own words. You compare the comparable part first, then read the detail on the two or three worth reading. See what's open.