...saying you had to get a hospital job and that you had to goad the hospital "make" the job for you if you if it didn't exist.
Yes. This is the trend:
New grads "
creating" jobs with rural and CAH facilities. Sometimes it's at IHS or VAs that don't have a DPM yet also.
However, there is a
definite downside to this: the job was not there for a reason. The area is too small! There's not enough work in places with 2k, 3k, 5k, even 10k (depending on what is around them and if other pods/ortho nearby). Even if there
is enough work, podiatry was likely the last hired (and least needed), and they'd be the first to go in any budget crunch.
I've received more PM and txt from new grads last year than ever before along the lines of "
hi, need to switch jobs... not enough work for me out here... hospital is asking questions, clinic is still way too slow." These are
well trained guys... the ones where were giddy about their salary + bonus just a year earlier. I typically tell them any jobs I've heard of and suggest marketing f2f with PCPs and ER asap, do nail care to fill the appointments, making clinic f/u short to fill the schedule...and they usually tell me they have done all those.
🙁
New Grads: if you're at these small / tiny hospital jobs you created, you NEED to get fairly busy asap.
Hospitals want surgery, MRIs, PT refers, admits. Money always matters. It's essential to
shake hands and bring gifts to all area PCPs (many will be midlevels in boonies). Talk to their schedule/referral staff. Ditto for
ER: tell them what you can do, you're happy to help, give your number. ER will probably have a lot of midlevel too; get to know them if you want a secure job and a full clinic. Hospitalists also.... not fun work, but it generates $$$. Go to every medical staff meeting and lunch and CME that you reasonably can; have the hospital do a catered meet-n-greet open house for your clinic if they will.
I'm sorry to say, but depending on just giving it time and the employer rural/CAH hospital doing a youtube or newspaper or billboard blast is not nearly as effective. Any media/mass marketing is short-lived. It will get you a few new patients shortly after the mailing is sent or the ads run, but the hospital does NOT want to spend that money + resources every year. True, it's
technically the hospital's job to market you, but
YOU will be the one without a job if you can't be fairly profitable. It is much different at VA/IHS, but at any for-profit system, the hospital bean counters ARE tracking you. You need to drop your ego and make these jobs work - at least until you get your loans paid off and ABFAS cert... and you have other options. The
DOCS AROUND YOU can get patients into your clinic MUCH better and faster and more consistently than some radio or newspaper ad. Do not be shy.
Market like your job depends on it. In many cases, it will. Sad but true.
...In the days I finished residency,
well-trained pods were "creating" these hospital jobs in cities (often in/near their residency system)... and mainly outskirts suburbs hospitals. Now, we are going waaaay out there to find untapped hospitals to make these gigs at, and it's fairly hard to make such small town and catch areas work out as a specialist. It can be done, but it's not automatic or to be taken lightly. Podiatry is saturated AF that we've gone out to these podunk places, and they are unfortunately not solid ground unless you can make the pod clinic/service busy and
profitable.
