need career advice from more senior members

[doesitmatter]

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Greetings,

Here is the scenario....
I am currently a fellow in a board certified sub specialty. I have signed on for another year in a non-boarded fellowship at the same institution. My current boss has offered to hire me such that I wouldn't be able to do the second fellowship. By taking the job, I would break a contract, burn a bridge, and then hang around in the same department for awhile.

I have bills to pay, a family to feed, etc. Which is more important...seizing an opportunity that has come my way, or passing on the opportunity and not burning a bridge?

Some considerations...
The job would be specialty specific.
The director of the second fellowship would not be understanding of my situation.
I have a decent lead on a private practice job (top-heavy practice, might sell, great pay, etc) for after the second year of fellowship.
The pathology job market (considering my particular circumstances) sucks and the private sector seems very unstable.
The economy is in the toilet.

Any insightful advice would be greatly appreciated...

 

[caffeinegirl]

What are you goals? Do you want to stay in this same department? How big is the department (ie, what would the impact of the "burned bridge" be?) Or do you want to go into private practice? How big is your "lead" for the private practice position?
All these things have to be taken into consideration. So..it depends on your final goal...

 

[mlw03]

i would also ask, what do you want to do? is the second fellowship something you like and wish to practice? do you want to be a subspecialist pathologist? also agree it's important to assess how badly the bridge wound be burned.

 

[cjw0918]

If you like the subspecialty and wouldn't feel too limited by looking only at that, I say go for the job. To me, job almost always trumps additional training. You can always go back (maybe not to the same place) for more training, but good jobs are HARD to find. The fellowship director may get pissed, but realistically, he/she has 10 months to find a replacement for you. It's not like it's May and you're not showing up on July 1. Good luck.

 

[sirenomelia]

These are the types of questions they should ask in medical school interviews to weed out the type of people who question whether they should bother honoring a commitment they made to someone else.

 

[mario2010]

Take the job, no question. Fellowships are easy to come by, specially non-boarded ones. Its really difficult to find a job in current climate. People drop fellowship positions all the time and at the same time they fill up quickly. Someone else will do the fellowship instead of you. As someone said earlier its august not May.

 

[Granular]

Seriously, take the job, unless the director of the second fellowship is the department chair or someone really famous. Through their thirst for grossing mules, academia has created the oversupply environment that demands trainees line up multiple fellowships years in advance. Anyone hiring you to do your second or third fellowship has to know in the back of their mind that you could get a real job offer. The same qualities that made you attractive as a fellowship candidate probably make you attractive as a job prospect. If the fellowship director wants a guaranteed fellow to show up, they should pay more (like $90K or more, not PGY5 or 6 dollars) or hire fellows that are such bad candidates that they would never be able to land a real job. The fellowship director can advertise and get a dozen qualified candidates in a week. If you have a family, loans, etc, I think those realities trump the feelings of the second fellowship director. Your indentured servitude ended when you finished residency and passed the boards - you should not feel compelled to fulfill the contract; the same institution is offering you another contract for a real job. If the second fellowship director comes after you in some way, I think everyone will recognize they are being petty. Maybe they will direct some of their pettiness toward the current fellowship director for offering you the job.

 

[yaah]

It's in the same institution.

This is something that your future boss and your potential program director need to discuss, I would think. There may be a way to combine the second fellowship with some signout duties so that you can not burn any bridges. Or, perhaps the future PD will let you out because the institution doesn't want to lose you.

Either way, this is something that does not need to be just you dealing with all the drama. I know you intimate that you are stuck in the middle, but if the institution is truly that bad where there are intradepartmental squabbles then you might not want to work there.

 

[Pathwrath]

Take the job. The whole point of second fellowships--especially non-boarded ones!--is to keep you busy servicing academics until you finally land a job. Well, you landed one. The fellowship director may not admit this, but believe me, he knows it.

 

[Thrombus]

These are the types of questions they should ask in medical school interviews to weed out the type of people who question whether they should bother honoring a commitment they made to someone else.

Don't you think academia should honor a trainee's (and his/her family's) best career options (after all, their own careers are heavily subsidized by these trainees)?

Value in this country should be paid for. For some reason, the communists in academia have devised a nice little class of indentured servants paid for by the taxpayer (and taxpayer's kids and grandkids). If they want to retain the services of one of these "indentured servants", lets see them put their money where their mouths are and pay the piper.

 

[pathstudent]

Future non-boarded fellowship director should understand. At worst it is an inconvenience for him to have to find a new fellow, and he has almost a year to figure it out. For you to follow through with the fellowship is at best passing up on a career opportunity and 100,000 difference in income. No rational person would side with the non-boarded FD.

Like someone said before, your boarded FD should be able to smooth things out.

 

[2121115]

The job would be signing out only subspecialty right? If so that could limit your future options if you want to go into a general private practice. Consider that too when making your decision.

 

[KCShaw]

Do you care whether the director of the future fellowship "doesn't understand"? And really, how do you know they don't/won't understand? Then, how much do you want the experience of that particular 2nd fellowship? I would try not to overcomplicate the situation, and focus on the one or two points which are most key to you personally.

I also agree that this isn't, and shouldn't be, solely about -you- nor that whatever feelings are swirling around the department aren't -your- responsibility simply because two other people evidently have different ideas about how they want to use you. Generally speaking a fellowship director doesn't hire & fire, unless they are also the department chair or there are some unusual business arrangements in place.