Medical Director

[cutelilmd]

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hey there SDN poster, I have some questions for you.

I will be starting MD/MBA (specialize in hospital management) this coming fall, and I'm extremely excited about this. I did a lot of research on what people do with MD/MBA, and one of the things I'm interested in is being a medical director. I look at medical director as the middle man between physicians and administrators. However, I also want to practice medicine (treating patients) and being a medical director at the same time, do you guys think it's possible? I don't know too much about the field, I think maybe medical directors do practice on patients while doing their job.
It's just clinical experience is a skill that requires constant dedication, it's not something that you do and drop, and expect to pick it back up right away, that's why I want to keep those skills really bad🙂

Another questions is, a lot of job requirements for medical director is to have 5 years of clinical experience. Does the clinical experience in residency count?
i want to do residency in the primary care section such as family med, internal med, and pediatrics so I hope residency do count as clinical experience. If it does, that will be great, I could count the years I will do in residency with an additional 2 years I will do once I become an attending, and hopefully get a job as a medical director.

I would really love to hear everyone's input on the medical director field, I'm still learning about the field.

thank you so much

 

[TexasPhysician]

It may depend on the hospital. If you want to be the medical director in Podunk Wyoming, they may let only 2 years of post-residency clinical experience slide because there are few others applying for the job. Contrast that to MD Anderson in Houston where there may be hundreds of applicants better qualified than you.

A psychiatry resident I knew went straight from being a resident to Director of Psychiatry in some Podunk city. No one else really wanted the job.

Job requirements are usually more like recommendations depending on who the competition is....

 

[deuist]

I also want to practice medicine (treating patients) and being a medical director at the same time, do you guys think it's possible?

In emergency medicine, all of the EMS medical directors I know continue to work clinical shifts, as do all of the EM physicians who work in administration. Your scenario is certainly possible.