Doing Disability Phy$ical$

[DeanWormer]

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Anyone do these for extra $$$$$$$? I'm looking to get into disability physicals, independent medical exams, etc. How do you get work? and what's the pay like?

 

[blueclue]

I'm also interested... does anyone know if you need a license to do these H and p's??? Can a graduate that's not yet in residency do this work?? thanks in advance..

 

[secretwave101]

Can't speak to the OP, but I can speak to "opportunities" for unlicensed M.D. grads = they don't exist. I took a year off to "give myself a break" and it was terrible. I'm sure others have done better than I did, but in the Portland, OR area, I had a very difficult time finding any work of ANY sort. My extended education drastically hurt me when applying for non-medical jobs, and was not "certified" enough for anything in the medical field.

For 3 months I did odd jobs for a guy who flips houses. 9 bucks an hour, under the table. He nagged me about how to hold the paint brush and how to tape plastic up. I'm an M.D., the guy didn't finish high school, and he's tutoring me on how to paint (and occasionally treating me like an idiot when I would get something "wrong" by his random standards). The sad thing is...there were times when he actually NEEDED to tutor me because I didn't know jack about most of what I was doing. In general he was a cool guy, but it was humiliating.

Then I got an on-call job in a community ER as a tech for $15/hour and have been absolutely evicerated at times by nurses. Many of them have serious issues with doctors, and it was known (despite my efforts to keep my education a secret) that I'd been to med school. Many of the nurses will only relate to me if the good-natured joke is really in some way depricating to me. Pretty much every joke was some version of me "laughing" at myself. Although it has a vaguely valuable learning experience, in general it's been one of the worst years of my life and totally wasted on many fronts professionally.

If you can avoid a year off - unless you ALREADY have something lined up that will really work for you - I suggest you continue right on to residency. I've talked with some others taking time off and their experiences haven't been quite as demoralizing as mine, but certainly not edifying by any means.

I'm headed off to FM residency in Olympia, WA and I am, to say the least, unbelievably excited to get started. I can't wait to trade a nurse's clog in the a** for an embroidered white coat.

 

[outofhere]

Check out http://www.qtcm.com/index.aspx for this kind of stuff. Usually disability eval is outsourced by Social Security, Disability...etc, and these companies find physicians who are licensed, and usually PGY 3 or above, or board eligible, to do this work. You get paid by the number of patients you eval and dictate, I think it ends up being about $60 per pt, or per hour, (I can't remember the details.) They usually want you to be available for a whole day on Saturday and they line up patients for you, I think you get 45 minutes each.

 

[design]

I'm also interested... does anyone know if you need a license to do these H and p's??? Can a graduate that's not yet in residency do this work?? thanks in advance..

If you have an unrestricted license, you can try MSDI. Only available in certain locations though. 🙂