“A good balance between mom and physician but hoping to make it better”
[This is a guest post]
Hi everyone,
So many of the stories here touch me personally. I am a Internist who came out of residency wanting to build an outpatient practice and focus on preventive care. But taking that road would mean seeing 20-30 complex patients everday , with income not worth the time and emotional energy spent, so I decided to go part time. I crafted a parttime arrangement with an outpt practice at first but it was at a county facility that saw mostly chronic pain patients, so I got out of that and lo and behold started locums work as a hospitalist( something I never thought I would do). I did this for 3 years, the work was not exactly what I had envisioned for my career but it gave me a lot of flexibility and during this time I had my first child.
My intention when I started as a hospitalist at this hospital was to work part time here until I found something I liked enough to do full time . Well 5 years later , I am now an employee with the hospitalist group I was doing locums work for. I am still part time and have flexibility in designing my schedule on a month to month basis which gives me time with my son which really is the most important thing to me. Hospitalist work in this day and age is becoming very emotionally and physically draining. The days I work pass by in a blur with little time for my family and constantly trying to find a way to get home in time for dinner with my son, but the days I am off are really nice to catch up on life.Lately I do feel like I want to get off this roller coaster and design a better life, maybe try to start an internet business or start a completely new career outside of medicine.
