Skip to main content

Becoming a Part-Time Physician

Image
By

Next month my schedule will change.  I will henceforth be off on Fridays with my work week truncated to Monday through Thursday.   I am excited to be enjoying a long weekend every weekend.  And while the schedule change is relatively minor, this event does feel like an important career moment for me.  It is the first step on a journey that will ultimately lead beyond my professional career.  It is this recognition that makes this modest schedule modification more significant than one would think it deserves. 

As some readers know,  my current employed position has been a dream job for me.  Prior to this, I was in a small private practice, which I loved, but was much more challenging professionally and personally.  My partner and I ran the business.  Working nights, weekends and holidays were routine for decades.  On an on-call night, if I slept through until morning, I felt as if I had won the lottery.  And we served our patients and referring colleagues in community hospitals 24/7. 


Botticelli's The Birth of Venus
Friday is named after the Roman goddess.

I now practice exclusively out-patient gastroenterology seeing office patients and performing procedures.  As I am in the autumn of my career, the loss of autonomy in the employed space does not distress me as it would have had I taken this position years ago.  I am thrilled at this point to be relieved from the responsibilities of hiring personnel, meeting payroll and overhead,  negotiating with insurance companies and hustling to recruit patient referrals.   Yes, there are moments now when I am reminded of my employed status such as when I request vacation time.  When I was in charge of my own practice, I took time off whenever I wanted.  Now, vacations requests may run into a speed bump or two, but this is a small price for all of the upside I enjoy.

I am not taking Fridays off because I feel overworked or that the work no longer brings me joy.  I simply want to lengthen the weekends.  I’ll keep you posted on the journey which is about to begun without a finish line in sight.

 

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

When Should Doctors Retire?

By
I am asked with some regularity whether I am aiming to retire in the near term.  Years ago, I never received such inquiries.  Why now?   Might it be because my coiffure and goatee – although finely-manicured – has long entered the gray area?  Could it be because many other even younger physicians have given up their stethoscopes for lives of leisure? (Hopefully, my inquiring patients are not suspecting me of professional performance lapses!) Interestingly, a nurse in my office recently approached me and asked me sotto voce that she heard I was retiring.    “Interesting,” I remarked.   Since I was unaware of this retirement news, I asked her when would be my last day at work.   I have no idea where this erroneous rumor originated from.   I requested that my nurse-friend contact her flawed intel source and set him or her straight.   Retirement might seem tempting to me as I have so many other interests.   Indeed, reading and ...
69 comments
Read more

The VIP Syndrome Threatens Doctors' Health

By
Over the years, I have treated various medical professionals from physicians to nurses to veterinarians to optometrists and to occasional medical residents in training. Are these folks different from other patients?  Are there specific challenges treating folks who have a deep knowledge of the medical profession?   Are their unique risks to be wary of when the patient is a medical professional? First, it’s still a running joke in the profession that if a medical student develops an ordinary symptom, then he worries that he has a horrible disease.  This is because the student’s experience in the hospital and the required reading are predominantly devoted to serious illnesses.  So, if the student develops some constipation, for example, he may fear that he has a bowel blockage, similar to one of his patients on the ward.. More experienced medical professionals may also bring above average anxiety to the office visit.  Physicians, after all, are members of...
9 comments
Read more

Inpatient vs Outpatient Care;: Can Doctors Do Both?

By
Five years ago, I left hospital wards and emergency rooms behind and entered a new & improved medical practice model, at least for me.  Since then, I only see patients for office consultations and procedures.  Office medicine is a very different trade than hospital practice each having very distinct skill sets.  If I were to return to the hospital now to see patients, it would be uncomfortable for me (and them) having not used these skills for years.  Similarly, hospital-based doctors might find transitioning to an office practice to be clumsy and uncomfortable. While it might seem that a gastroenterologist or any medical specialist should be able to see patients in any location, this is not the case for most of us.   Hospital medical issues are quite different from office medical complaints.   Physicians, as in so many other occupations, need repetition in order to maintain high competency levels.   There’s a reason, for example, that airline pi...
7 comments
Read more