Read time: 3 minutes
Fear.
Medicine self-selects for non-risk takers, generally speaking.
The personality traits that make you a great clinician are not the traits that align with independence of thought and a desire to bet on yourself.
The path of most physicians is a conservative one: if you ace the tests and achieve academically you will be accepted into a solid medical school.
From there all you have to do is not mess it up.
That’s right: 1) “be smart enough” and 2) “don’t mess it up” will get you farther than you might think in any job, but especially medicine.
Like all career paths that lack significant competition, medicine doesn’t require you to demonstrate tremendous aptitude once you get the job. Once that happens you just have to keep it.
I can’t help but think of the scene in Office Space where the consultants realize that most employees are redundant and/or expendable:
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Getting a job and keeping a job are also 2 very different skill-sets. At this point, you might realize that good doctors haven’t really had to “get a job” since they were accepted into medical school.
Sure, being accepted into a residency and/or fellowship isn’t easy. Neither is landing your first attending job at a prestigious academic medical center.
But there are only so many minted doctors going into x specialty, and only so many of them want to work at y medical center.
There is very little competition at the top. This isn’t corporate law or tech.
No one gets out-competed for their own job (after they already have it) at a medical center.
There is very little turnover in the hierarchy of a medical department. People move in with the intention of growing roots.
And so we return to fear.
Breaking the mold is scary. That’s the bottom line.
It’s a fear of starting over and of the unknown that keeps people in jobs they hate. Jobs they complain about tirelessly.
And the longer you stay on any path, it begins to look like the righteous path. You begin to identify with it. You and your colleagues agree it is the just path. It is good.
Even if it didn’t take all that much to get there and stay there.
Complacency develops.
And if your path is good, then anything contradicting it must be bad.
So who are those bad men and women daring to choose a different path?! How dare they?! (Refer to last week’s newsletter on misconceptions regarding self-employed clinicians.)
Mindset shift
To begin a new path, to choose to begin a new path, requires a true conviction. It requires an element of risk.
It requires a very specific personality type that is underrepresented in medicine as I see it.
You too might fall into that camp of the conservative, stick-to-the-path mentality. So what can you do about it?
All is not lost.
Everything is a discipline unto itself. Work the problem:
- Open your mind to the distinct possibility that there is more than just the one path – the path that you are on and committing your life to.
- Willingly choose to learn about the other choices available to you (hopefully that’s why you are reading this now).
- Entertain the possibility that you have a choice of how to carve your own path, your own career.
- Recognize that not all possible choices are equal. That is to say, some may be better than others.
- Choose your path.
Let me be the first to say: not everyone is cut-out to self-employ as a physician or a nurse. There are plenty of pitfalls you might not have considered.
Nothing is a sure thing, but contract employment is a step closer to chaos than a full-employment w2 position.
I’m just recommending that each of us keep an open-mind about what a good career looks like.
In my opinion, a good career path allows me to have significant control over my schedule while being compensated appropriately. But hey, maybe I’m asking for too much!
Some people are built to coast in life.
Some of us are not.
Stop trying to be something you aren’t.
Whenever you’re ready, here are 2 specific ways I can help:
1) Let’s talk through what choosing your own path through medicine looks like: calendly.com/tonyvullo/20min
2) Free Articles and Resources: tonyvullo.com
I can be reached by email: [email protected] or message me directly on the socials
Tell me how I can help your specific situation and find a way for you to take control of your time.
Help Patients. Work Less.
Do More of Everything Else.
