Suggestions regarding re-entering medicine?

[bec1]

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I'm considering getting back into medicine after a 5 1/2-year hiatus, and am looking for ideas. I started a solo practice fresh out of orthopaedic surgery residency in a small town in central Illinois, bent on being a different kind of surgeon, and basically burned out after 5 years. I was board certified and a fellow of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons.

I very much enjoyed doing surgery, but I also took a special interest in the "difficult" patients, the ones with psychological overlay that weren't going to be good candidates for surgery. I ended up spending a lot of time with them, treating them nonsurgically (intensively monitored exercise programs, education, judicious diagnostic workups, injections, and at times, pain medication).

For an assortment of reasons that I won't detail here, I quit medicine rather than simply move to a new location when my practice failed to live up to my hopes and aspirations. I've been successfully doing computer programming at a thriving Internet security software company in the SF Bay Area ever since then, and am only now healed enough from my first practice experience to consider returning to medicine. The question is, what kind of medicine? I'm not really interested in *chronic* pain management, but musculoskeletal rehabilitation and related pain issues are certainly within my area of competency and interest.

I let my AAOS membership, and my Illinois license, lapse. My orthopaedic board certification has certainly expired by now, as well. I've been completely out of the medical profession while I've been out here in California. Any thoughts appreciated regarding career options and paths to get there. Licensing process, appropriate fellowships given my background, where to direct my search for an appropriate practice location (I'm not looking to open another solo practice), etc.

Thanks.

 

[Hank Tong]

I'm considering getting back into medicine after a 5 1/2-year hiatus, and am looking for ideas. I started a solo practice fresh out of orthopaedic surgery residency in a small town in central Illinois, bent on being a different kind of surgeon, and basically burned out after 5 years. I was board certified and a fellow of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons.
I let my AAOS membership, and my Illinois license, lapse. My orthopaedic board certification has certainly expired by now, as well. I've been completely out of the medical profession while I've been out here in California. Any thoughts appreciated regarding career options and paths to get there. Licensing process, appropriate fellowships given my background, where to direct my search for an appropriate practice location (I'm not looking to open another solo practice), etc.

Thanks.

If you graduated from residency 10.5 years ago, you may be lucky and your ABOS license will never expire. By the way you practice, you were definitely in medicine to help people and not for the money. Medicine needs more people like you. I am a PM&R physician with fellowship training in spine. I think the major problem you had was the practice set up. Since you are not all about money, but are into quality of care for your patients, I think you should consider academic medicine. I am currently at the University of Michigan and we have a set up for Spine where we manage all the nonoperative care of spine patients and the surgeons handle the operative care. We have a comprehensive rehabilitation program, excellent PT/OT/pain psychology while the surgeons focus on being excellent surgeons without worrying about the nonoperative management.

For extremity/sports medicine, the orthopedics surgery department have a sports medicine trained FP and a rehab physician who help manage the nonoperative cases. It is not as comprehensive as ours, but still fairly good. I understand the chair of ortho wants to set up a comprehensive musculoskeletal center.
Even though you are not all about money, the fields of spine and sports medicine will probably remain the most lucrative for a while in the field of ortho. Our spine physicians can see new patients every 60 minutes, be very selective on who they operate on , and still make at least $400,000. This is not as good as private practice, but you do have to give up something when you go into academics. I hope this will give you the practice style you are looking for.
Why not check to see if you can do a fellowship in spine or sports medicine, get recertified, and then consider academics. If you have problems getting recertified, consider doing getting a NIH research fellowship ( there is some grants for people who left medicine and are interested in getting back into research but I do not know how competitive they are. Just look for K grants at nih.gov)

I would not give up on orthopedics. In medicine, you get paid for what you do, and just seeing patients in clinic/injections get paid much less than doing surgery. Since you enjoyed surgery, don't give that up. Just join a group that will complement your skills as a surgeon. If you don't like academics, another option is to join/hire a PM&R physician to help you manage the nonoperative cases efficiently, and if you are generous, you could give them some of your collections from your surgeries, since they are freeing up your time so you could do more surgeries.
Good luck.

 

[pacingtoandfro]

wow... I need to get back to PMR after a 6 year hiatus - I trained in India - any leads if US is a good place for me?

 

[drusso]

I'm considering getting back into medicine after a 5 1/2-year hiatus, and am looking for ideas. I started a solo practice fresh out of orthopaedic surgery residency in a small town in central Illinois, bent on being a different kind of surgeon, and basically burned out after 5 years. I was board certified and a fellow of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons.

I very much enjoyed doing surgery, but I also took a special interest in the "difficult" patients, the ones with psychological overlay that weren't going to be good candidates for surgery. I ended up spending a lot of time with them, treating them nonsurgically (intensively monitored exercise programs, education, judicious diagnostic workups, injections, and at times, pain medication).

For an assortment of reasons that I won't detail here, I quit medicine rather than simply move to a new location when my practice failed to live up to my hopes and aspirations. I've been successfully doing computer programming at a thriving Internet security software company in the SF Bay Area ever since then, and am only now healed enough from my first practice experience to consider returning to medicine. The question is, what kind of medicine? I'm not really interested in *chronic* pain management, but musculoskeletal rehabilitation and related pain issues are certainly within my area of competency and interest.

I let my AAOS membership, and my Illinois license, lapse. My orthopaedic board certification has certainly expired by now, as well. I've been completely out of the medical profession while I've been out here in California. Any thoughts appreciated regarding career options and paths to get there. Licensing process, appropriate fellowships given my background, where to direct my search for an appropriate practice location (I'm not looking to open another solo practice), etc.

Thanks.

https://interventionalorthopedics.org/