Career within healthcare is it time to change?

Many health care professionals come to a cross road in their career where they have done excellent work clinically but feel they want to do something different. The questions become what exactly do I want to do and how do I get there? For some it is changing to a career in health care administration or perhaps health care education. Other medical professionals take the entrepreneurship route knowing that if the business venture does not work out they can always return to their previous clinical job.

I know fellow RN colleagues that have attended law school and now work in the Risk Management Department of various hospitals as well as a private physician owned national staffing business. What I have observed over the years is that highly intelligent, accomplished clinicians-physicians, RNs and Therapists don’t necessarily have the business experience to be successful in a business venture and need to expand their education.

I came upon an interesting blog post http://doctorscrossing.com/blog/ that recommends a book to physicians offering advice to those that want to leave the clinical world and make a career change. I imagine this is a very difficult decision given the amount of time and effort it takes to become an accomplished and specialized physician. The book, Do You Feel Like You Wasted All That Training? Questions from Doctor’s Considering a Career Change by Mike McLaughlin, offers some key advice when considering a career change as a physician and can be applied to other health care professionals as well.

Many of us have left the clinical setting with mixed feelings-after all, look how many years our work defined who we were. Patient care is extremely challenging and rewarding. There are other challenges that can be embraced where the skill sets we used in a clinical setting can translate to other areas.

Good luck in your next medical career!

Working as Travel Nurse or Travel Therapist-things to consider

This is the time of year in the colder regions of the country that many of us are growing impatient for spring and warm weather. Within health care, there is a group of health care professionals-primarily RNs and therapists-that schedule their work around the 4 seasons and follow the sun. For those experienced medical professionals that have the flexibility in their personal lives to be able to basically move to another part of the country for 13 weeks, travel assignments are a great way to make a sizable income, avoid relentless snowstorms, power outages and never-ending grey skies.
Travel assignments are not for everyone. As previously mentioned, Registered Nurses and Therapists with family responsibilities will not be able to pack and leave for 13 weeks. To take on a travel assignment a health care professional needs a solid base of experience in their specialty area, as well as some great people skills to assimilate into a new group of co-workers- a sense of adventure is essential. I have known highly experienced RNs that are so tied to working in their specific unit that they became almost hostile when pulled to another unit to help out in a crunch-I’m taking about once every few years. Obviously travel nursing would never be on their radar. A close friend of mine, and fellow RN, has a sister that is a nurse practitioner and has been “traveling” for years and absolutely loves it. Aside from loving her work, it has afforded her a very nice life style. She has taken off months at a time to travel the world when not working-she is a true adventurer.
A nicely written article by Carol Dunbar highlights what nurses need to consider before pursing an adventure in traveling-this would also apply to Physical Therapists, Occupational Therapists, Speech Pathologists, COTAs and PTAs that travel. http://www.nurse.com/travelmoving/travelinfuture.htm
So if you are an experienced health care professional, with a sense of adventure, maybe a travel assignment next winter is the way to go. Perhaps walking on a sunny beach in February instead of shoveling endless inches of snow is the way to go.

Physician pay, career choices and gender

With half of medical students in the U.S. being female, it is surprising to find out that female physicians are being paid less than their male counterparts. This discrepancy is present for new physicians starting in the job market and as well as specialty areas such as cardiothoracic surgery and pulmonology . Several sources point out that female physicians many times specialize in areas where the pay is traditionally less such as family practice or pediatrics. Careers in these specialties can offer flexibility with scheduling and maintaining a work-family life balance. However….this does not explain the difference in compensation for new physicians with equal responsibilities and hours.
An article that addresses this issue and provides some interesting statistics from a survey of both female and male physicians can be found at http://tinyurl.com/48ylnxf  The authors have noted that the pay discrepancies have been steadily increasing for years even after taking into account specialties and hours worked.
This data is disturbing considering that physicians, both male and female, are bright and assertive individuals and one has to think how this can exist. A career in medicine is challenging enough without having to battle for what seems to be a given-equal pay for equal work. Even coming from a career in nursing which is still predominately female, this is puzzling. Pay or compensation in nursing is very often based on tangibles-years of experience and degrees obtained regardless of gender.
Something to think about and best of luck in your health care career.

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