Sabbatical Month

[Colbert]

My group is beginning to offer a sabbatical month. It is basically a month where I can pursue whatever I want to enrich my professional career, help avoid burn out, reignite my passion for emergency medicine, etc. I could likely work my schedule one either side of the month to add a week to stretch it to 6 weeks.

What have you guys done with a sabbatical month? I would prefer to bring my family with me if I go anywhere (including 2 kids < 5 years old). I have considered an intensive medical Spanish course. Any other ideas of how I could utilize the month beside renting a house in Tuscany and drinking wine?

Cheers!

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[SterlingMaloryArcher]

Spanish sounds awful personally. So to be clear, is this basically just a month of vacation?

In which case I recommend Phnom Penh. See how they do things differently out of the mainstream bubble.

 

[Colbert]

It could be taken as a month of vacation, but in an ideal would be combining some sort of vacation and career growth. We have a large spanish speaking population in my ER so that would be helpful. I'd also really like to consider a volunteer abroad opportunity that is roughly 4 weeks and also appropriate to bring my family on.

 

[Tenk]

I would go snowboarding for 6 weeks to enrich my career as an ER doctor who likes to snowboard.

 

[dadaddadaBATMAN]

My group is beginning to offer a sabbatical month. It is basically a month where I can pursue whatever I want to enrich my professional career, help avoid burn out, reignite my passion for emergency medicine, etc. I could likely work my schedule one either side of the month to add a week to stretch it to 6 weeks.

What have you guys done with a sabbatical month? I would prefer to bring my family with me if I go anywhere (including 2 kids < 5 years old). I have considered an intensive medical Spanish course. Any other ideas of how I could utilize the month beside renting a house in Tuscany and drinking wine?

Cheers!

If you're going to do this, maybe do an intensive month in southern Spain drinking wine every night. Then travel Europe for the remainder of the time.

A month isn't going to teach you spanish, but it could get you a start for a basic history so you only need a translator to confirm and investigate details.

 

[deleted109597]

Medical spanish seems fine.
Don't do medical tourism. If you want to go plug into an already established system that simply has a need for EM docs to help train their docs, then that's probably a good bet.
Or go be an expedition doc on one of those Kilimanjaro courses.

 

[killdevil]

A month isn't a sabbatical. Go on a nice trip somewhere out of the country.

 

[cyanide12345678]

My wife and I are toying with the idea of a 4-6 week sabbatical as well when she finishes residency and my contract ends at the same time.

We are currently thinking of flying into somewhere in Europe, renting a car and then a giant road trip through most of Europe.

The only problem is that our future daughter who isn't born yet will only be 1.5 years old and it will make traveling a lot more challenging.

 

[Birdstrike]

My group is beginning to offer a sabbatical month. It is basically a month where I can pursue whatever I want to enrich my professional career, help avoid burn out, reignite my passion for emergency medicine, etc. I could likely work my schedule one either side of the month to add a week to stretch it to 6 weeks.

What have you guys done with a sabbatical month? I would prefer to bring my family with me if I go anywhere (including 2 kids < 5 years old). I have considered an intensive medical Spanish course. Any other ideas of how I could utilize the month beside renting a house in Tuscany and drinking wine?

Cheers!

This is just great.

:standingovation:

 

[Groove]

My group is beginning to offer a sabbatical month. It is basically a month where I can pursue whatever I want to enrich my professional career, help avoid burn out, reignite my passion for emergency medicine, etc. I could likely work my schedule one either side of the month to add a week to stretch it to 6 weeks.

What have you guys done with a sabbatical month? I would prefer to bring my family with me if I go anywhere (including 2 kids < 5 years old). I have considered an intensive medical Spanish course. Any other ideas of how I could utilize the month beside renting a house in Tuscany and drinking wine?

Cheers!

Rent the house in Tuscany and drink wine.

Although I commend your group for recognizing the dangers of burnout and taking action, doesn't this just force a month vacation for each doc and limit further vacation planning for the rest of the year under the auspices of "mental health" and well being?

 

[Groove]

That being said, I'd hardly feel obligated to police my free free time during a forced month off to make sure it adhered to a structured CME schedule. I'd say do whatever brings you and your family happiness. That's way more high yield than learning something that you'll probably forget in a few months.

 

[Brigade4Radiant]

I would recommend Duolingo and use that for a year before you use up a month of your time in an intensive language course I would also recommend visiting Spanish speaking country.

If you want something intense try getting into intermittent fasting on your month off it will change your life!

 

[TooMuchResearch]

Our group is doing this. It doesn't affect other people's vacations/days off as we hired up for it. No policy on what one does with their time off. I'm not doing it anytime soon; too many debts.

Rent the house in Tuscany and drink wine.

Although I commend your group for recognizing the dangers of burnout and taking action, doesn't this just force a month vacation for each doc and limit further vacation planning for the rest of the year under the auspices of "mental health" and well being?

 

[GeneralVeers]

I've never understood a "group offering a sabbatical" in reality it just means lower pay for everyone to subsidize the sabbatical. Whenver this has been brought up in the groups I've worked for, it has been shot down for just this reason. With current scheduling, it's easy enough to take 10 days off back to back in 2 months, which gives nearly 3 weeks vacation. Of course you pay for it by either working more on either end, or just settling for fewer hours those months.

 

[deleted109597]

It's not a subsidy unless they're getting paid, which I doubt. It's just promoting extended vacations. Which means everyone works more, or they're filling in with PRN/Locums guys when people are gone.

 

[thegenius]

Is the sabbatical time getting paid time-off? Our group talked about that once, most everybody didn't want it because the others would have to work more and we are paying the other person for time off.

I can understand sabbaticals for people who work for very large companies with 10,000s employees and multiple revenue lines (e.g. Kaiser) but for SDGs that staff 1-2 hospitals, I don't like that idea.

These SDGs need to think of other ways to incentivize docs to stay, other than this kind of solution. People should want to stay because the total value of the compensation package.

 

[TooMuchResearch]

We're not that large of a group. Majority of people wanted to do it, so we hired up and are doing it. Nobody is getting paid for sabbatical, nobody is having pay cut (in a sense they are of they're taking a month off and not making it up later, which is the idea). Nobody has to work more. And if we hired up too much? Who cares. People retire, people cut down their shifts, etc. The hiring cycle never ends, so we're actually ahead of the game slightly, big deal.

Is the sabbatical time getting paid time-off? Our group talked about that once, most everybody didn't want it because the others would have to work more and we are paying the other person for time off.

I can understand sabbaticals for people who work for very large companies with 10,000s employees and multiple revenue lines (e.g. Kaiser) but for SDGs that staff 1-2 hospitals, I don't like that idea.

These SDGs need to think of other ways to incentivize docs to stay, other than this kind of solution. People should want to stay because the total value of the compensation package.

 

[TooMuchResearch]

We hired additional doctors, no locums, nobody is working more than they want.

It's not a subsidy unless they're getting paid, which I doubt. It's just promoting extended vacations. Which means everyone works more, or they're filling in with PRN/Locums guys when people are gone.

 

[SterlingMaloryArcher]

What is the difference between a sabbatical and a vacation???

 

[deleted109597]

What is the difference between a sabbatical and a vacation???

Length it appears. Face it, most of us can't just up and take 6 weeks off. 4 weeks is tough, if you work more than 12 shifts, because you'll be stacking them into the first two weeks and the last two weeks of the months.

 

[TooMuchResearch]

Length and no need to still work all your shifts that scheduling block.

What is the difference between a sabbatical and a vacation???

 

[TooMuchResearch]

Not if your group hires appropriately so no one has to pay back their shifts.

Not figuring out how to make it work is a choice most groups make.

Length it appears. Face it, most of us can't just up and take 6 weeks off. 4 weeks is tough, if you work more than 12 shifts, because you'll be stacking them into the first two weeks and the last two weeks of the months.

 

[deleted109597]

Not if your group hires appropriately so no one has to pay back their shifts.

Not figuring out how to make it work is a choice most groups make.

No, I don't disagree. Many of us plan vacations over month transitions because it allows you to do that.
However, if instead of you choosing to take a "month off" worth of shifts, could you take 1 less shift per month or whatever instead?