PRN is pleased to be able to follow the progress of clinical physicians as they search for new non-clinical careers. This first entry from an Internist in Los Angeles is titled Why I Decided to Leave Clinical Practice:
In 2000 I worked for a 20-physician primary care group as an Internist. My biggest source of displeasure was there were times when it was difficult to see the 20 patients a day in the 15-minute time slots. If a patient came in who needed to be hospitalized, I would have to do a complete admission history and physical, admission orders and call all the physicians that needed to see the patient in the hospital, all in the 15-minute time slot. Yet, overall the work was rewarding and stimulating
In 2002 my group decided to be one of the first medical groups in Los Angeles to institute computerized medical records. I felt that if I worked hard at learning the new system when it was first being introduced, in 1 year I would be “coasting.” I put in 10 to 11 hour days, because with Internal Medicine patients with 3-4 medical problems, it was not uncommon for it to take 30-40 minutes to put 1 patient in the templates where we entered our notes. The templates were easy to finish if the patient had a cold or a urinary tract infection, but not with the complicated Internal Medicine patients. Although I was faster with my data entry after 1 year, 3 years later when we were now seeing 22-26 patients per day, I was still putting in 10-11 hour days without lunch. The group made the system available to our home computer so that at least we could do our work in the comfort of our own homes. These long hours were in addition to the weekday evening and weekend call where I had to go to the hospital to work. I always felt rushed and discouraged. I found myself getting mad at patients when they had more than a routine follow-up, or had 2-3 problems that they wanted me to address.
One might say the easy solution to my problems would be to find another job. Yet changing jobs meant getting a pay cut. I watched my friends in business use their job experience to leverage more lucrative pay in new jobs. Yet, I found nobody wanted to compensate a seasoned physician any more than a resident just finishing training. After 20 years as a practicing Internist, I felt like I wanted to leave clinical practice. Yet, I did not know what I wanted to do next. Internal Medicine was the only thing I knew how to do.
To be continued . . .
