Interviewing for Peds Jobs

[drkristy85]

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I am a PGY-3 currently applying for Peds jobs in the MidWest and I am getting quite frustrated. It seems like all the jobs are RVU-based and require you to work A LOT. Starting at 8am and official office hours til 5pm or 6pm but of course you often need to stay to finish up notes, paperwork, etc. You're seeing 25-30 patients per day and many jobs have call too. They all offer a great salary which is awesome, but they won't let you make less money and just work less.

My husband makes a very good living and I would like to work less in exchange for less money. Part time would work but seems like there are no part time jobs out there. It is frustrating that you spend 4 years killing yourself as a pre-med to get into med school, then 4 years of killing yourself in med school, then residency. And when you are done with that, you want a normal work-life balance.

Don't get me wrong, I do want to work as a pediatrician and I do work hard. But I have talked to several colleagues, attendings, and family friends in the field and it seems like it is just not a good work-life balance. They are forced to see too many patients to keep up and stay late to finish notes, often til 8pm or so.

I am just wondering, is there a way to negotiate this into a contract? To be able to see fewer patients in exchange for lower salary? Has anyone successfully done this?

 

[bjackrian]

I definitely have friends who have been able to negotiate 50-60% jobs. For many of them, it seemed that the key was either finding a larger practice or finding a partner to apply together with. With larger groups, it seems that there is more flexibility as there are likely to be more people working less than five days per week so it's easier to shuffle people to ensure that the office (or offices) are all covered. Because they're larger, they also are more likely to have had a person who wanted to work less than full time previously and so have probably dealt with the issues that part time work brings (i.e., what to do about benefits, vacation, partnership, etc.). One other set actually applied as a package deal, saying that two of them would cover one full time position (they'd get paid half the salary each and work out between themselves how to split shifts). They talked the practice into covering benefits for both of them, but they had the standard amount of vacation to split between them. Seemed to work reasonably well. One other scenario I've heard of but not witnessed is the practice that really wants you to work full time out of residency to get your feet wet and gain rapid, independent experience, but becomes much more flexible if/when you become a partner or senior person (depending on how the practice is structured).

That said, all of those people had to do more searching and several ended up settling for less than their ideal practices to get the working conditions they wanted. I do think that these jobs exist, but they're hard to find. Good luck!

 

[drkristy85]

Thank you bjackrian!