What are the options as an MD, if you get stuck in a specialty you hate, and you want to leave?

[FogHorn]

If you don’t like your specialty, and you don’t like your work environment:

—The bureaucracy

—Speedrunning through checkups

—Being oncall for everything that other people messed up

—Being overworked for less pay because the clinic is running on government reimbursements

—Nobody is interested in your ideas to improve workflow, even if they are good ideas


Where do you go? Spend up to a decade or more respecializing? Pharma? Biotech? Telehealth? Consulting? Get on the AI train?

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[Osteoth]

First question is how much money do you want to make?

You will likely take a pay cut to start, but a few fields you can potentially get back up to your MD salary, including consulting, pharma, finance. They are in that order in terms of how easy they are to get into, assuming a not in-demand specialty.

If you don't care/need money then you can do whatever.

I would suggest changing jobs/settings/fields before leaving medicine if you are on the fence, you will be starting over in a brand new field.

 

[Iamnew2]

First question is how much money do you want to make?

You will likely take a pay cut to start, but a few fields you can potentially get back up to your MD salary, including consulting, pharma, finance. They are in that order in terms of how easy they are to get into, assuming a not in-demand specialty.

If you don't care/need money then you can do whatever.

I would suggest changing jobs/settings/fields before leaving medicine if you are on the fence, you will be starting over in a brand new field.

All of those things you mentioned are not easy to get into and most physicians don't have the experience or luck.