Spouse/Partner careers

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I'm curious about other spouses/partners: do you have jobs? demanding careers? are you stay-at-home?

What aspects of your job/career/non-working have served you well as the spouse of a doctor or future doctor? What has been hard or impossible?

(I do not mean to get into a stay-at-home vs. working spouse dichotomy here, but to learn from those who have noticed good or bad ways their own choices mesh with medical professions of their spouses/partners)

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[LadyMoreta]

My husband is in residency, and I currently work, but I am planning to stay at home once we have kids. It was really nice to have my income during medical school, so we ended up with a lot less debt than we would have. (Not that we don't have enough as it is... )

I work in IT, so I make a little more than a resident's salary. My job isn't very demanding - standard 40 hour work week. During medical school, however, my first job required a lot of travel. We found that to be much too stressful on both of us, since I wasn't around during the week, and he had to work many weekends. Since I got a different job that didn't require a lot of travel, it's been much easier. In fact, a lot of times he was home before I was in the evenings. (He left much earlier than I did in the mornings, though!)

Since residency started, we've been living pretty much like we did in medical school, and saving a lot of his salary. That should help make up for the loss of my income once I start staying at home.

 

[Wacaggie]

My wife is currently a M4 and we are waiting to see where we will end up on March 19th. I am an Engineer so I have a decent salary which has helped us to live a normal life during medical school. I also hope that my training and now experience will allow me to get a job quickly if we need to move in June this year or next year. We didn't get married until the middle of her M1 year so we still have quite a few med school loans ourselves including my college loans.

Any time I have to travel it is pretty rough, especially when I had to go to China for a few weeks. Lately I have been able to stay near home so it has been pretty nice.

My wife is trying to enter a competitive field so having my salary has helped pay for applications. We put more money up front for the application and interview process than most people can. This I believe gives her a better chance at matching and will ultimately be a very good investment in our future.

I work at my computer the majority of the time so I was able to help catch interview offers and schedule flights and hotels for her while she was doing M4 rotations. This helped relieve some of her stress about the process.

Ultimately I plan on working in Engineering until my wife wants to start up a private practice, if that is what she intends on doing after residency, and will help to run the business side. I enjoy finance and business and I know she does not so being able to work near my wife, being able to set up a playroom for our future kids in the office, and taking away some of the parts of running a practice my wife would despise should help us have a good life in the future.

 

[xanthines]

Wacaggie:

Wow! You're wife is a lucky gal! Good on you!

My future wife and are both in medical school, so other than being able to relate to her working conditions, there isn't much I can do/offer at the moment. We have talked about if one of us is going to stay home or not and who will do what, but for now it's all theoretical.

-X

 

[Jape]

Well, I am not in medical school yet, but I am waiting to hear back from my school of choice this month. My SO is in dental school and she will be in her 4th year of dental school when i am a M1, and after that she will be a dentist. Hopefully that will ease some of our financial burden during the rest of my medical school experience. We plan on continuing to live somewhat like students so we can save and pay off our loans quickly.