Best state to be a Psychiatrist

[BobbyB]

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I went to med school in Australia, and I spent most of my time at a hospital in the part of Sydney that's home to the infamous funnel web spider, one of the deadliest spiders around. Throughout med school, I never saw (or heard of anybody else seeing) a venomous spider bite in our hospital.

as FMGs in OZ we'd probably spend the next 10-15 years in Tasmania

 

[BarryZuckerkorn]

How about Colorado? Any insight?

 

[Shikima]

Good tax structure and quality of life. Psych is needed all over the country.

 

[OldPsychDoc]

How about Colorado? Any insight?

Potential boom market for adolescent substance-induced psychosis.

 

[slappy]

How about Delaware?

 

[Euthymia]

I'm surprised no one has posted this yet
http://www.medscape.com/features/slideshow/best-places-to-practice-2013#1

 

[heyjack70]

The correct answer is Wisconsin. Cheese baby.

 

[NickNaylor]

Yeah that's a myth. The truth is, you'll end up living in a motel if you move there, since most property in Texas gets wiped out in tornadoes or hurricanes or the inevitable (and previously uninsured) fertilizer plant explosion. At least that's how it seems based on the current insurance market. Just in case anyone wants to know, if you try to buy auto/home/renter's/fertilizer plant or whatever insurance in El Paso on a day that a hurricane is predicted to make landfall anywhere in the Gulf (i.e. somewhere between Galveston and Tampa), you're out of luck. And if you try to buy insurance in Galveston on a day that tornadoes may be expected in Amarillo or Lubbock, again, no go. The whole state shuts down all at once. That's like closing the schools in Charlotte, NC because snow "may be" predicted in Boston, or for that matter, Bermuda.

Not to mention, having the Texas Board of Education in your state pretty much affects property values in the same way it would to have Chernobyl right in your own backyard.

For spewing a lot of vitriol about the state, I certainly hope you have some experience living there.

 

[nancysinatra]

Nancy, are you on PCP? Regarding the idea of buying insurance in the midst of a catastrophe, I don't even know how to respond.

No I am not taking PCP. My point was that the state is huge. Why should you not be able to buy car insurance in El Paso just because there is a disaster in Galveston? El Paso is closer to Los Angeles than to Galveston and I'm sure State Farm in El Paso doesn't shut down when there's an earthquake in LA. The only theory that logically explains this geographic anomaly must be that the various parts of Texas are united in their misery.

I lived in Texas at one point. Luckily it was rather brief, although I still follow matters there in the same way that expatriates from Axis of Evil countries probably follow goings on in their homelands. Anyway let me explain - I bought a car in southeast Texas. I also bought car insurance. I think it was Geico. Like a number of other auto insurance policies I've had in my life, eventually, this one caught up with me. They discovered my "record" of a prior speeding ticket in another state from several years earlier. (60 in a 50, something like that.) Now Texas has some weird law allowing people to somehow expunge their old speeding tickets by taking a class about speeding. (There's so much to learn!) But the state where I got the ticket does not. In Texas, if you don't take the "class" your insurance rates go through the roof. Like, $1000 a month. I guess they think if you didn't take the "class" you're a real risk. So anyone with a speeding ticket from another state without such classes is in a bind there. Anyway Geico or whatever had an even more draconian policy. They just dropped my insurance altogether. Without bothering to call me.

Since I only check my mail every 28 days or so, I found out that my insurance had been dropped just in the nick of time, exactly 28 days after they sent the letter. This is how I learned that most auto insurance companies will REJECT your application for coverage if your car has been uninsured for 30 days or more. Stupid, I know, because people without insurance usually need it more than people who have it. I'm sure there's a good actuarial reason why they do that, such as weeding out criminals. But here I'd driving around uninsured for 28 days, and hadn't even known. The only reason I even opened my mail THAT day was that I was about to embark on a road trip to 6 other states and figured there might be a third notice of a bill or something else in there that I should deal with before leaving town. So imagine my panic when I learned I had no auto insurance and only 2 more days left to ever insure that car.

I went straight to State Farm. There, I was told, that a hurricane was predicted to land "somewhere in the Gulf" later that week. Like I cared? I was about to leave town! I was the best insurance risk they could have asked for! Even where I was, it was nowhere near hurricane range. Yet they informed me that nowhere in the whole STATE of Texas could I buy insurance until the hurricane made landfall. Meaning, if I called up their El Paso office, almost 1000 miles away, they would say the same thing, but if I could claim to have an address in Oklahoma, which was much closer to the hurricane zone, then one of the offices there could help me.

Anyway I used my grandma's address in the Midwest, and got a policy online from that state with no problems. She lives on a shady crime-free, Cadillac and Lincoln-Continental-lined street inhabited almost entirely by WWII vintage people, which allowed me to get the cheapest auto policy I have ever had, all online. Printed out my new card, and hit the road. And it was good, because in Nebraska I got pulled over!

Anyway, with the limited time I have at the moment the first things I'd like to state is that renewal of medical license is Q2 years.

Do they intersperse it with the DPS renewals? Come on, you know those renewals are expensive. Plus that extremely worthwhile Texas Medical Jurisprudence Test and the Texas Medical Jurisprudence Online Study Modules - there's another $500 easily! And yet despite all that jurisprudence knowledge, Conrad Murray, the cardiologist of Michael-Jackson-involuntary-manslaughter fame, managed to come from none other than Houston...

and this August when my wife had our third kid, I'll be taking a week of paid PATERNITY leave.

A) Are you supporting paternity leave? Do your neighbors know about your views??

and

B) Congratulations!


Sorry for the digression... back to the topic I hope.

 

[nancysinatra]

For spewing a lot of vitriol about the state, I certainly hope you have some experience living there.

And no one in Texas ever spews vitriol about northern liberals, do they? And Rick Perry has never threatened to secede from the Union, has he? The most amazing thing to me about Texans is not how proud they are of their state, but how sensitive they are! More easily offended than a bunch of Marin County vegans!

 

[nancysinatra]

xx

 

[nancysinatra]

x

 

[TexasPhysician]

And no one in Texas ever spews vitriol about northern liberals, do they? And Rick Perry has never threatened to secede from the Union, has he? The most amazing thing to me about Texans is not how proud they are of their state, but how sensitive they are! More easily offended than a bunch of Marin County vegans!

Can I take offense to this without proving the point? I feel helpless..... 🙂

 

[st2205]

So, from what I'm gathering from that post, is that the state we should avoid practicing in is State Farm?

 

[nancysinatra]

So, from what I'm gathering from that post, is that the state we should avoid practicing in is State Farm?

I'm not really sure I would say that. I cannot properly express my views on the State of Texas here in this forum, which is devoted to the subject of psychiatry. However what I would caution people who are thinking of moving to Texas to practice medicine, because they imagine they will be "free" there, is that, for a state that proclaims itself as a haven of libertarianism, wow there is a lot of red tape. And confusing regulation galore. What I realized after awhile was, they may not have taxes, but they tax people's patience (and wallets) in a whole bunch of other ways.

Perhaps Vermont would be a nice place to work. I really don't know, honestly. The question is silly to begin with because a) most people in medicine are conservative by nature and not inclined to move all over the country on a whim and b) the answer is different for everyone.

 

[nancysinatra]

Can I take offense to this without proving the point? I feel helpless..... 🙂

A Texan who can keep their cool when someone is spewing off about Texas?? Well, who knew? Maybe there are some redeeming features to the place after all, in addition to being able to eat tacos for breakfast. 🙂

 

[shan564]

Clearly you guys haven't seen this:

http://www.tacobell.com/breakfast

 

[OldPsychDoc]

"Like a Good Neighbor..."

 

[BobbyB]

I'm not really sure I would say that. I cannot properly express my views on the State of Texas here in this forum, which is devoted to the subject of psychiatry. However what I would caution people who are thinking of moving to Texas to practice medicine, because they imagine they will be "free" there, is that, for a state that proclaims itself as a haven of libertarianism, wow there is a lot of red tape. And confusing regulation galore. What I realized after awhile was, they may not have taxes, but they tax people's patience (and wallets) in a whole bunch of other ways.

Perhaps Vermont would be a nice place to work. I really don't know, honestly. The question is silly to begin with because a) most people in medicine are conservative by nature and not inclined to move all over the country on a whim and b) the answer is different for everyone.

stay away from Vermont
they are going to need about 2 billion in taxes to implement single-payer
last year the entire state generated only 2.7 billion in taxes
who do you think is going to have to take a pay cut in order to balance the books?