We found a series of articles about retirement from clinical practice on the Medical Economics website.
Here is an excerpt from one of the articles, which was written by By Lauren M. Walker:
“”It amazes me at medical meetings when 10 percent of the doctors say they’ve just retired and another 10 percent say they can’t wait to get out,” declares Vermont child psychiatrist and author Stuart A. Copans. “It used to be that physicians didn’t retire; they’d practice into their 80s. But retirement for physicians has changed because medicine has changed.”
A recent survey of 300 doctors age 50 and older by the physician search firm of Merritt, Hawkins & Associates in Irving, TX, found that 38 percent plan to retire in the next one to three years. Another 16 percent plan to close their practices to new patients or significantly reduce their workloads, 12 percent intend to do locum tenens work, and 10 percent will seek employment in a nonclinical or nonmedical setting. Only 18 percent intend to continue as they are.
“When I started in this business,” says longtime practice management consultant David C. Scroggins of Clayton L. Scroggins Associates in Cincinnati, “doctors didn’t have the kind of retirement funds that would let them quit early. It wasn’t until the 1970s that the laws on retirement plans really opened up for them. The doctors who are reaching their late 50s and early 60s have the financial resources to get out.”
But that doesn’t mean they’re emotionally ready to give up their professional lives. “If people treated the emotional preparation for retirement with as much care as they give to the financial side, they’d be in great shape,” notes psychotherapist Phil Rich, co-author of The Healing Journey Through Retirement (John Wiley & Sons, 1999). “People who retire may have 20 years or more ahead of them. If you haven’t prepared for those years, it can be depressing.””
To read these articles, please visit the Medical Economics website.
