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Hi,
I'm currently working as a hospitalist. Completed internal medicine residency last year. Pay is adequate $215/yr, and I work fifteen 12-hour shifts per month. But I am not happy with my career as a hospitalist. I am interested in becoming a psychologist and going into academics. I guess another option would be psychiatry residency. However, I feel that psychology would be more academic.
1. How competitive is it to become tenured faculty in a University psychology department?
2. If I practice as a psychologist, would I be able to prescribe w my DEA license (if I keep it up to date)?
Thanks in advance for your opinions and advice
Sorry to hear that you are not happy with your current position. Tenured track positions in psychology departments are incredibly competitive. I think going through 8 years of additional training to become a psychologist with a starting salary that is 1/4th of what you are currently making (50-60K) is going to be overkill.
You can enter academia/research with an MD as well. There is no need to get a PhD degree. I would look into this. There are a ton of research fellowships i've seen available to MD's.
Another option could be PP with a teaching affiliation at a hospital?
I would focus on what you can do with the versatile and in demand degree that you already have instead of getting another degree that is going to take nearly a decade of your life. Maybe you need to switch to a different env/setting?
PHD12 - Thanks for your comment.
a. I was afraid that would be the case, it seems like tenure track positions are incredibly competitive in every field right now.
b. It seems to me that academic faculty positions in medicine or clinical science are just not the same as in other fields such as the basic sciences, humanities, or social sciences. There usually isn't tenure, you don't teach courses (you may give a few lectures within a course), your teaching is mostly bedside with residents and fellows, you still have to be on call, etc... I don't know how to explain it, but an academic position in psychology is more similar to one in mathematics or physics, than it is to ones in medicine/nursing/dentistry/pharmacy.
c. I think you are right about trying a different environment/setting, I have only had one job since graduation from residency.
AnnoyedByFreud - Thanks for your comment. I asked because right now, I prescribe a lot of psych meds in the hospital, such as SSRIs, seroquel, zyprexa, remeron, benzodiazepines, etc... Are there any meds that psychiatrists can prescribe that internal medicine would not be able to prescribe? I know that in some other fields, this is the case, for example, in oncology, internal medicine cannot prescribe chemo agents.
AcryonymAllergy - Thanks for your comment.
a. That's what I was thinking, that a PhD would allow me to compete for traditional tenure-track positions. But if it really is super super competitive, it may not be worth it.
b. I can live on a $75/yr salary, as long as it provides longevity. I don't think I can continue my current job for more than 10 years.
I guess my question is should I:
a. Do a residency in psychiatry, would take 3 yrs, would get paid $50/yr, and there will be overnight/weekend calls and busy months.
b. Pursue a PhD in psychology, which will take 4+ yrs, live on a teaching assistant salary of $20/yr, maybe moonlight on the weekends ($1000 per shift) to supplement. And try to land an academic position.
I should have gone the Med/Psychiatry (5 yr) path or direct Psychiatry (4 yr) path, when I had the chance. It is just that, psychiatry still has a stigma in medicine and I wasn't brave enough to ignore it and go with my gut.
Can I get a PhD in psychology, open up a private practice, bill as a psychologist, and prescribe SSRIs, Benzos, anti-psychotics only when needed, kind of like I do right now as an internal medicine doctor? For example, aren't there states where psychologists prescribe after they get a Master's in psychopharmacology. Couldn't I substitute that master's in psychopharmacology with my MD?
Do psychologists have a pager or phone that they keep on at night, for patients to call when needed?
If you plan on billing for therapy then I would definitely stick with the MD and pursue a psychiatry fellowship. Reimbursement is significantly higher, and it will seamlessly allow you to prescribe medication while conducting therapy.
You say 4+ years of grad school for a clinical PhD, but coursework, thesis, and dissertation, alone are 4-6 years, internship is a year, and residency/post doc is 1-2 years, so it would really be more like 8 years of your life, where you are earning a maximum income of 40-50k/year. 3 years of psych fellowship at 50k/year with higher reimbursement rates sounds much more appealing to me than 6-8 years of psych grad school with a stipend of 20k/year and post doc pay of <40-50k/year.
Your salary is awesome (especially given that it's your first job), not adequate
I thought internal medicine folks were paid the least of the MDs.
If you want to do more research than clinical practice, perhaps you could find a research fellowship geared toward MD's. My best friend is a physician who is currently doing a 2 yr research fellowship in neuro.
Your salary is awesome (especially given that it's your first job), not adequate
I thought internal medicine folks were paid the least of the MDs.
Yes, if you think $215 K is only "adequate"; you will not be happy with the salary of a psychologist
Excellent advice (assuming you get the proper training/supervision/etc prior to practice...and that is a big assumption). The new billing for psych is modeled after procedure based work, so that'd actually be an easy transition.
That is a bit of an exaggeration. Assistant Professor (Ph.D./Psy.D. only) positions within a medical setting start at $65k and can easily be $85k...and this is in the Midwest (where I am most familiar with salaries). If he had an M.D. / Ph.D. (and assumed training as a researcher, etc) he'd start $130k-$185k...or so I have seen in a few diff. depts within a few different hospital systems. Clinical work pays the bills, but there can be time for research if you are willing to compromise and do part-time research.
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The above two responses are actually a bit off the beaten path for what is probably your best bet...which is to seek research mentorship and then consider training options.
Being "an academic" can mean many things to many people, so I think you are best served to talked to a range of professors in different settings and see if any of their day to day work is what you truly want to do. Some professors teach, mentor, and research in a classroom setting, while others do those things in a medical/other setting. Some do ZERO clinical work, others do quite a bit...it all depends on what kind of split you want in your day to day work (and can convince someone to pay you to do).
I love the field of psychology, though the economics of it are quite poor. As a physician you have excellent economics (compared to psych and most non-clinical/non-psych Ph.Ds), though some/many can get burned out by the day to day work. If I were in your position I'd talk to colleagues or others in your medical system about getting involved in research. Most likely it will be linked to clinical work (that's what pays the bills), but you need to start somewhere.
Even with being involved in a research project you will need to do a lot of reading on the side (or maybe take some classes at a local university in research methods, statistics, etc)...or maybe enroll in a research-focused Masters program. Either way, you'd probably need to step back from 15 12-hr shifts because you don't want to burn out btw your job, reading/studying/reviewing/learning research stuff.
As for a Ph.D....I wouldn't recommend that for where you are in life. Don't misunderstand me...I very much enjoyed my doctoral training, but it took 8 years, forced me to relocate multiple times (we use the match system too), accumulate debt, and only in the past few years have I been able to really do what I want. Your biggest barriers will be the learning curve involved with any kind of research work and the fact you will need to change your work hours to make room for A LOT of reading/studying/other.
Best of luck.
*edit to add*
I work with some of my physician colleagues on a range of research projects, and most of them are not M.D. / Ph.Ds. They are typically clinicians who spend the majority of their time doing clinical or administrative work, but they want to learn more about doing outcome research for their clinics, they want to get something published in a journal, etc. Depending on what you want to do with research and within academia...you very well might be able to shift your time to include more research options without having to blow everything up and start over in a Ph.D. program. Frankly, I'd want to dip my toes in before considering a jump into anything.
Hi,
I'm currently working as a hospitalist. Completed internal medicine residency last year. Pay is adequate $215/yr, and I work fifteen 12-hour shifts per month. But I am not happy with my career as a hospitalist. I am interested in becoming a psychologist and going into academics. I guess another option would be psychiatry residency. However, I feel that psychology would be more academic.
1. How competitive is it to become tenured faculty in a University psychology department?
2. If I practice as a psychologist, would I be able to prescribe w my DEA license (if I keep it up to date)?
Thanks in advance for your opinions and advice
Hi,
I'm currently working as a hospitalist. Completed internal medicine residency last year. Pay is adequate $215/yr, and I work fifteen 12-hour shifts per month. But I am not happy with my career as a hospitalist. I am interested in becoming a psychologist and going into academics. I guess another option would be psychiatry residency. However, I feel that psychology would be more academic.
1. How competitive is it to become tenured faculty in a University psychology department?
2. If I practice as a psychologist, would I be able to prescribe w my DEA license (if I keep it up to date)?
Thanks in advance for your opinions and advice
I almost fell out of my chair when he said he could make $1000 for one moonlighting shift! I am happy when I make that in a week.
ummm..I'm a resident and I get 3200/weekend to cover a unit and admissions..
Before you do anything have you thought about going into therapy...for yourself?
Wow, that is a ton of money. Why don't you guys just moonlight two days/week and have the rest of the week off to dabble in whatever you'd like (once you finish residency)? You can still make over 150K just working on weekends. Or are these jobs not available on a regular basis?
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