The best academic job

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Chronic wean
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There was a recent thread about tuition perks of being on faculty at a unuversity hospital. It made me wonder whether there are departments out there that are known to have good salary, great benefits, consistently protected office time, pension plans, etc.?

Like a lot of people aiming for academics, I enjoy the teaching and complexity of cases. After a CCM fellowship next year, my family and I will have relatively few limitations in choosing an area to settle in. I couldn't find any threads that discussed specifics of which departments are great to work for.

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Seriously? Do you think anybody would advertise his/her cushy job on a public forum? Maybe they will tell somebody they like, in a private message, but that's the most you can expect.

Also, if you're limited geographically, forget practicing CCM, and look for a good anesthesia-only job. The chances of finding a good anesthesia-CCM job in a limited area are generally low. There aren't that many in general, either.
 
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Seriously? Do you think anybody would advertise his/her cushy job on a public forum? Maybe they will tell somebody they like, in a private message, but that's the most you can expect.

Also, if you're limited geographically, forget practicing CCM, and look for a good anesthesia-only job. The chances of finding a good anesthesia-CCM job in a limited area are generally low. There aren't that many in general, either.

Is that what you've noticed during your job search ? I was told that basically all academic departments were hiring.
 
Most academic jobs are not posted on gas work. Many u have to go internally to their website and follow the contact info.

Of course ur application can get muddle with all the other applications. Depends how desperate a dept is.

The real issue is the Critical care dept in academic places. Most of those established guys in critical care/anesthesia basically do 1 week one/1 week consult/1 week vacation/off/one week consult

But the newbie critical care anesthesia guy gets dumped on. It's like one week on/one week general Or/one week on again/one week consult
 
Academic departments are as variable as private practice jobs. Some places are set up very well, have a fair payor mix, run lean and offer very good income, while others tend to take advantage of the new people, their staffing is very flabby, and the pay may suck. These places can be a mile or less apart in the same city. Your goal is to find a place that pays you a good income for the amount of clinical time that you work. Some places consider 3 1/2 days a week full-time, get you out often by 3 o'clock, etc. while other places think five days a week is full time and will regularly work you until 6. The second one might actually be the better job, if they pay enough and you are interested in working hard and making more money. Academia tends to attract more of the not work very hard and don't care about earning a lot of money crowd.
The only way to find out is to call and apply, but first you need to assess what you want out of a job and then go looking. I had offers that varied by more than 200k. You also need to know what the faculty are making after they are board certified and make assistant professor. It may me a lot more than your starting offer. Lots of people aren't cut out for academics, have little to offer, and are just using it as a jump off point for a better career/area/etc. They tend to bring down the starting offers for the truly committed.
As a data point, my academic job pays better than the AMC offers I've seen posted here and has less call, less clinical hours, a lower supervision ratio, and better benefits. It's a stable fair group and as a result has little attrition of faculty. The competition for a position is extremely high. As AMCs expand and what they offer (or don't offer) becomes more common, good academic positions will continue to become more competitive and even, gasp, desirable. You won't likely make 600+, unless you're the chairman, but you can certainly expect average MGMA numbers with a solid benefit package. And that's not too shabby when you're not working very hard.


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Il Destriero
 
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