Best time to get an MBA during medical education

[justsomedude]

hey all-

preclinical med student here considering also getting an mba somewhere in the medical education process. So far, the possibilities include taking an extra year during medical school to get the mba (5 year combined degree), doing night classes during residency for the mba, or in some form or another getting the mba after residency training (full time or night classes)

does anyone have any advice to the pros and cons of each way to get the mba degree, or anyone have any experience doing this one way or another and recommend/discourage it? thanks.

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[michaelrack]

doing night classes during residency for the mba, .

This won't be possible if you are doing a real residency. Might be possible if you are doing a psychiatry residency.

 

[surg]

Wait as long as possible. Getting it too early often means you never end up using the degree. You don't want your business knowledge to get stale either while you wait to use it. You may also find that your career progresses in a way that your MBA isn't going to be needed, so why spend the money?

 

[DrJosephKim]

It depends on what you hope to gain with that MBA. I also agree that it helps to wait if you plan to really apply those business skills with experience and education. There are currently many executive programs designed just for physicians who wish to learn more about medical management. Those classes won't make much sense if you don't have first-hand experience in the clinical setting.

 

[justsomedude]

Thanks a ton for the replies. It's definitely given me some ideas to think about.

I just wonder about doing the MBA after clinical training and what kind of time commitment would be needed to do the MBA in addition to a full time clinical practice. As of right now, I have no significant other and no other real responsibilities. I completely understand that the business training I would receive now may not be directly applied for years, but have others found that they can "pick it back up" later in life with some review?

Thanks in advance for any comments.

 

[arrhythmia7]

I'm practicing full-time right now, and doing the part-time (evening) program at Kellogg. It is definitely difficult, but most of the utility you get out of an MBA is going to be in the immediate period after you finish. I have alot of friends that did MD/MBA combined crammed into 5 years, and only one of them is doing something non-clinical.

 

[pokerslut]

hey all-

preclinical med student here considering also getting an mba somewhere in the medical education process. So far, the possibilities include taking an extra year during medical school to get the mba (5 year combined degree), doing night classes during residency for the mba, or in some form or another getting the mba after residency training (full time or night classes)

does anyone have any advice to the pros and cons of each way to get the mba degree, or anyone have any experience doing this one way or another and recommend/discourage it? thanks.

I'm going to assume that you are interested in a health-care MBA.

Have you ever thought about doing one online during medical school? I am doing one at Davenport University, which is a brick and mortar school in Michigan but offers the degree completely online.

Some may knock the online aspect of the degree, but I am learning a lot of useful things that I've related to my prior work/life experience. The tuition is not cheap, but not crazy expensive like the MBA online offered by George Washington.

Davenport offers 2 sessions per semester; and there are 3 semesters every year. This allows the flexibility for you to take as little or as many classes depending on if you are reviewing for boards, etc. For example, I knew I was going to be studying for STEP 1, so I did not take an MBA class for the second session. The administration is great. The faculty is more than qualified, based on their experiences, resume-- and my interactions with them have all been positive.

 

[DrJosephKim]

You may want to consider an online MBA once you're a practicing physician. There are some that focus just on medical management.

 

[EUA]

I did mine online during residency. It ended up being a tremendous amount of work, but I'm glad I did it. Plus, the hospital I did my residency at had excellent tuition reimbursement benefits; I was only about $3K out of pocket (hospital picked up ~$12K over two years).

 

[DrJosephKim]

Some online MBA programs are very flexible and they allow you to complete it over many years (up to 5 years). Others are very rigid and require completion over 2 years. Make sure you do your research before you embark on the MBA journey.

 

[nontrdgsbuiucmd]

I'm practicing full-time right now, and doing the part-time (evening) program at Kellogg. It is definitely difficult, but most of the utility you get out of an MBA is going to be in the immediate period after you finish. I have alot of friends that did MD/MBA combined crammed into 5 years, and only one of them is doing something non-clinical.

I have my own personal bias in this, but think you should consider what you want to get out of this experience.

For me, (similar to the Kellogg MM program as I'm from the same city) much of the MBA benefit was interacting with other, highly experienced, qualified, and motivated students in an in-person environment. "business" is a live enterprise; go to meetings, conference calls, teams. I have worked (as a corporate person) remotely several days per week, but also voluntarily am in the office frequently too, as there are many things one misses in solely interacting through phone/e-mail/webex etc. I guess I'd liken it to what I've heard of psychiatry -- why have an in-person session versus by e-mail/phone? Because you'd miss a lot of opportunity to understand the patient.

I think there's quite a lot of value to online education, I think there's some value to just reading the books too. Think about what you want to get out of the program. Every evening/part-time program I've heard of allows flexibility to take 1 class at a time (or skip a quarter/semester or take more classes for any given quarter/semester), which would meet 1 night per week for around 3 hrs; probably another 6 hrs of work outside of class; would complete the degree in around 5 yrs total (around 20 classes).

 

[justsomedude]

some great discussion going on and more pearls of wisdom being offered.

i see that one of the major motivating factors concerning whether or not to pursue the MBA while in school is the money+time factor of that extra year. while i have taken this into consideration, the extra year is not that dissuading of a factor and i thankfully at this point have had a generous financial aid package for the MD aspect of my education that doesn't make financing the MBA an insurmountable issue.

so what it boils down to for me is two thoughts

1) my med school is affiliated with a pretty excellent MBA school, as in its one of the overall top MBA programs tossed around on this forum. my thoughts are that if i don't apply to the program as a current graduate student, i may never have a chance to get the name-brand recognition my university's MBA program affords.

2) on the other hand, i get this great MBA (contingent upon me getting in in the first place...) but it goes stagnant throughout my residency (just thinking realistically).

basically, one of the major reasons i would pursue an MBA at my institution is because i perceive it to help me segue into non-clinical careers.

what do you guys think? get the name-brand MBA now or possibly miss the chance at getting a name-brand MBA later, but have it be more recent?

 

[nontrdgsbuiucmd]

I'd suggest going only MD now, focus on that, do residency, and then complete the MBA later. I think it'd be impossible to focus wholly on medicine, and simultaneously focus wholly on business. They're totally different in too many ways; in business, you're focusing on the good of the firm, penetrating new markets, etc, whereas in much of medicine, it's that one patient and what's best for him/her, regardless of if this negatively impacts your employer's reimbursement or profitability.

A few caveats -- first, you may want to ask the school how they consider alums when accepting applicants to their other programs. I was surprised to learn how much of a boost is given to alums of a school when applying to a separate grad school, i.e. if you apply to Bschool years after earning that MD. Second, will you be staying in that same city when practicing medicine? If so, part-time (even weekends only would get you through) may be a good choice, when you're able to commit to taking Saturday mornings off.

 

[justsomedude]

After finishing my Bachelor degree in dentistry I wanted to go for master. But I found that getting MDS seat is very difficult so I have planned to go for MBA and registered at CalUniversity, which offers distance learning programs, admission’s counselors will make your education experience smoother and easier than you ever thought possible. You can take up any of the new courses among several Masters and Doctorate programs available.

Go for master, huh? I think one of the reasons you found 'go for master' very difficult may have something to do with your grammar skills.

And by the way thanks for hyperlinking the MBA at CalUniversity. I may not visit the site quite yet, as my virus checker software isn't currently up-to-date. However, I haven't lost enough money in the stock market yet, so I may head on over to enroll in some classes. Can I prepay for the whole MBA program on my AmEx?

For the other helpful reply, I may look into pursuing the MBA program closer to the time that I would segue into a more non-clinical role. Thanks for the advice.