I plan to leave. I am just reluctant to "quit."
I have rationalized it, I am not renewing my contract this August 01, 08, 'not quitting'. However, I still have not told the PD. Psychologically, this is a big step off the cliff. A doc without a completed residency, well it is a big deal to me, but I don't want to spend another day in residency.
I could end up on my feet or with my legs permanently broken with irreversible regret.
I have lined up a full time position in government doing employment physicals, no brainer work in a nice locale. No weekends, holidays off, no call, no malpractice worries, no diagnosis, no treatment, no prescriptions unless its for friends with simple problems. (I still have a license.)
While I gain an MPH online and then branch out into infectious disease and public health government work.
I want to be the one physician in a group. When one works at a hospital there are so many physicians around that administration loses their appreciation for their hard work and take advantage.
I am also in the National Guard as a doc so I can still be deployed as a flight surgeon taking care of the already health aviation crews 3 months at a time. I think I'll be okay, with this decision. I won't be completely removed from medicine. The military still sends me off to short training courses to maintain rudimentary skills. (Which is why my current residency year was extended a month.)
I just need to take a few more steps toward that cliff now.
(Man, I hate residency!)
Sounds wise, your path of keeping one foot in medicine.
I'm coming from business w/over 10 yrs experience, and have seen the good, the bad, and the ugly. I've volunteered for many months in different clinical settings and have heard MDs and their thoughts on this too.
Biggest things I've seen in business that make me prefer medicine:
- focused on business issues, which may or may not help people, but definitely won't help others in the way that doctors can help people. After a certain amount of time focusing on measuring things and training people in processes and optimizing performance, it kind of seemed unimportant to me in the big scheme of things.
- in business, things are not nearly as hierarchical - there is a boss, assistant vp, general manager, but they got there by starting in low level positions & working their way up, there's a pretty clear connection between levels, and there's little looking up to a manager because he/she's the boss. If they're good, THEN a worker would look up to them, but it's different than medicine where the MD can tell the RN or the PA exactly what to do, and the RN/PA will do exactly that or potentially be fired.
-business has lots of uncertainty regarding what is "right". IBM focused on mainframe versus PC and now Microsoft controls the app market rather than IBM, because IBM guys didn't grasp how the market would change in the late 70's/early 80's. Lots of similar examples. Medicine seems a bit more clear cut in that if a person comes into the ER with chest pains, you given them an aspirin and do these tests within this timeframe.
-businesses (at least large ones) are very political, if you get ahead depends quite a bit on convincing others of your value. And if your boss is conniving and you're hard working and good at your job, you may be invisible to others if you can't broadcast your successes around the company.
- job uncertainty - in business (probably not in government given my experience in the public sector) things are uncertain, had a relative lose a senior level job because his firm bought a small firm, the small firm president was given my relative's job. Another executive I know lost his position when his division was disbanded. At that level, often to keep similar salary, one must relocate. Both of the people I'm thinking of took over a year to locate similar positions. It scares me to potentially be mid-50's and lose an executive level job when my kids are at private colleges and I'm 10 years from retirement, medicine seems more secure.
-income. MDs I know discuss their effort & often that they feel worth more than they earn given the years spent training. The average household in the US earns 47K or so, there are a lot of college grad households who earn less than 100K, seems like a long time to pay off med school loans on that salary. The people I knew pursuing the executive jobs were at the office until 7-8pm every night, working lots of weekends, for many years in the hopes of getting that promotion. Seems more certain to know that, after residency, you're at 200K per year or whatever, and can focus on doing your job well without having to worry about money, too.