What type of pain practice setting would allow for summers off?

[MikeMerk-MtS]

This is a variation of former questions asked, but this specific question has not been asked/answered. I am curious if there exists pain practices out there that would allow for summers off, and if so, what type of setting would this exist in. Thank you!

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[lobelsteve]

This is a variation of former questions asked, but this specific question has not been asked/answered. I am curious if there exists pain practices out there that would allow for summers off, and if so, what type of setting would this exist in. Thank you!

Just go do plastics or derm. Or get out of medicine. Every question you ask is about your lifestyle. Try law or start a hedge fund. God help you if you cut corners to get to your boat or weekend house and suffer a complication.

 

[willabeast]

Derm is what you want. Make sure to do a Derm-Path year. Share a practice with one or two people you could work 6 months on /6 months off. And pick a sunny place to practice with beaches, for a nice lifestyle and lots of skin cancer.

 

[244913]

This is a variation of former questions asked, but this specific question has not been asked/answered. I am curious if there exists pain practices out there that would allow for summers off, and if so, what type of setting would this exist in. Thank you!

Get your b.Ed and teach high school biology

 

[MikeMerk-MtS]

Just go do plastics or derm. Or get out of medicine. Every question you ask is about your lifestyle. Try law or start a hedge fund. God help you if you cut corners to get to your boat or weekend house and suffer a complication.

While I appreciate your time disparaging my question, you really have no idea why I need summers off. I suggest thinking before you speak next time. Thank you.

 

[lobelsteve]

While I appreciate your time disparaging my question, you really have no idea why I need summers off. I suggest thinking before you speak next time. Thank you.

Who would want to hire you? No one. Open your own practice. Do what you want.

 

[jonnylingo]

While I appreciate your time disparaging my question, you really have no idea why I need summers off. I suggest thinking before you speak next time. Thank you.

Your questions and responses are off-putting. Most of us who have been in practice a few years have worked with residents or colleagues who perseverate on vacation. They are a PITA. They seem to work the very minimum. I've covered for my fair share of lazy, entitled co-workers. Whether that describes you or not, that's how you come off in your comments.

It would be difficult in any situation (PP, employee at hospital or multi-specialty clinic, to get away for more than a week or two). It's hard to escape the demands of overhead, call, and patient follow up.

 

[hyperalgesia]

This is a variation of former questions asked, but this specific question has not been asked/answered. I am curious if there exists pain practices out there that would allow for summers off, and if so, what type of setting would this exist in. Thank you!

You are looking for a locum tenens position or several of them spaced throughout the year.

Locum tenens in pain would be the least desirable of all positions. You would be doing what someone tells you, probably compromising your professional integrity - prescribing narcotics to drug addicts, doing procedures in unethical ways, etc.

If that particular lifestyle is important, I would avoid pain. Search for locum positions and see what's in demand.

 

[Ducttape]

the only possible options that I see is 1. a school position, such as the primary care doc in a college or university 2. a private practice where you can hire a locums to cover you for the summer, most likely again in primary care. I don't see this as a great option for a pain practice, as pain patients like to get familiar with one doc/provider

I think that most doctors recognize that their profession is a year round commitment, either to our patients or to our practice. patients rarely wait over a summer to get sick/seek medical care. and actively transfer care if they feel they have no access (with the exception of the Medicaid population). even a practice like derm would be hard to sustain if you are not actively seeing patients - every fall you will have to essentially re-market your practice to everyone.

 

[powermd]

Stick with pure anesthesia and look for an academic arrangement where you will work harder at other times during the year in exchange for summers off. You will probably need to make some big concessions in order for this to work, as your colleagues will have to buy in to the reasonableness of this arrangement.

The only way I could see PP pain working for you is if you find someone to swap schedules with. Say, you work their job in January because they love to ski, and they work your job in August, because you like to surf. More than four weeks off at a time will be a problem for building a practice in almost any specialty. Both your patients and referring doctors expect you to be available when they need you. I know I would tend to avoid referring to a doc if I had to remember- oh, wait... he's not around for the next 3 months.

 

[SeniorWrangler]

Academic positions tend to have a decent amount of paid vacation and don't mind if you take it all at once, so you could be gone for 3 or 4 weeks at a time, but not the whole summer. If you really want a job which involves not working for three whole months, I suggest looking at locums positions, I have friends who split their time between the place they play and the place they work and they seem pretty happy with it. I don't think pain is the best specialty for this kind of locums, though, anesthesia is better.

 

[Ligament]

Maybe quit medicine and work for a tech firm. One of my patients is getting 6 months off with 75% pay during that 6 months...works at Microsoft. My god, how easy they have it.

 

[Gauss]

Academic positions tend to have a decent amount of paid vacation and don't mind if you take it all at once, so you could be gone for 3 or 4 weeks at a time, but not the whole summer. If you really want a job which involves not working for three whole months, I suggest looking at locums positions, I have friends who split their time between the place they play and the place they work and they seem pretty happy with it. I don't think pain is the best specialty for this kind of locums, though, anesthesia is better.

locums is more in line with this type of request
academia has more generous CME, but PTO is not much different than employed positions. Most academic positions are non-tenure and are clinical tracts that have a low base salary but bonuses to compensate which factor in years of service, research/publishing, teaching, society appointments, and RVU productivity. Taking time off is nowhere near as generous as it used to be, even tenure tracts use their sabbaticals for research and publishing in order to progress up the ladder or boost their bonus. undergrad is less busy during summer, graduate & med students go year round, but residents and fellows starting up in june & july tend to limit taking time off in summer. you could take time off the month before the newbies start up.

 

[geauxg8rs]

School nurse

 

[paindoc007]

School nurse

 

[paindoc007]

School nurse

Lol

 

[Birdstrike]

This is a variation of former questions asked, but this specific question has not been asked/answered. I am curious if there exists pain practices out there that would allow for summers off, and if so, what type of setting would this exist in. Thank you!

Yeah. I don't know how you would do it, unless you did locums or were in a massively big group that wouldn't miss being down a doc. Or, maybe a group where snowbirds all leave town in the summer, and it gets super slow, maybe?
I don't know. This will be exceedingly hard to find in any specialty in medicine, since medicine is not seasonal. Also, I'd shy away from locums in Pain. I've heard too many horror stories of docs doing Pain locums, and it turns out to be an illegal pill mill which gets shut down with people being arrested. You don't want to end up in that situation. Locums work better for ED or hospitalist jobs in towns with seasonal tourism and big volume fluctuations.

 

[RM38]

There are a few people in my area (not pain docs) whom take large periods of time off during the summer because we have a very heavy seasonal population, but they work in groups that are able to handle the lower volume just fine during the offseason and really just need the extra help during the 6 months or so the seasonal population is here. These people are all pcps/pediatricians though. Probably would be difficult in pain because I really don't have that significant of a seasonal population and if I was busy enough to need a second doc in my office, they would need to work all year. You do have to realize that you would probably have to be in a large group that could cover your volume while gone for long periods of time which is hard to come by and recognize that it would likely be rather stressful for the other docs in the group. I wouldn't be willing to hire somebody in that situation because then it would be really hard for me to go anywhere during that period of time if am already swamped from trying to cover somebody else in addition to my own patients. I mean for a couple of weeks it could probably work, but for 3 months it likely wouldn't be worth the hassle and I would just hire somebody else. You do could do as others mentioned and open your own practice and hire locums for the months you will be gone, but if they are bad and scare away some patients and/or piss some of your referral sources off you could have it come back to bite you big time. Especially if people know that it will be a recurring yearly theme of a different new doc every summer, patients will leave.

 

[myrandom2003]

Radiology/interventional radiology

Don’t they get 12 weeks off a year? Rad onc guys can also get 12
Weeks off.

Not sure they can take all at once though.

At my wife’s academic hospital, one of her partners works for three months, goes to Pakistan to work for three months and back here to work 3 months (hepatology)




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[Agast]

There are pain jobs and doctor jobs in general in Alaska that pay you handsomely for working there 3 months at a time. They helicopter you in from Seattle or something like that.

 

[Biohazard685]

If you find out let me know via PM. Lots of salt out there, when ppl ask about lifestyle questions and I have zero intention about getting caught in the cross fire.

 

[Ferrismonk]

There are pain jobs and doctor jobs in general in Alaska that pay you handsomely for working there 3 months at a time. They helicopter you in from Seattle or something like that.

Last time I checked, Alaska had plenty of pain docs and pay wasn't stellar. If you want primary care in the bush though....