Before taking the leap, it is important to re-evaluate your current situation. Here are three suggestions from an article entitled “Stuck midstream? Change careers” by Deborah Grandinetti, on the Medical Economics website:
“1. Analyze your current situation to see what’s draining your energy . . . Weed out the time-wasters in your practice, so you can give yourself more personal time. Ask a colleague who is not in your specialty to help you problem-solve, suggests Robin Ryan, a Seattle career coach. Someone in another specialty won’t share your assumptions about how things must be done, and may see alternatives that would never occur to you.
2. Next, consider issues of life balance. Are you allowing enough time for the relationships and personal pursuits—intellectual, cultural, and leisure—that could revitalize you? Are you attending to your emotions and the call of your spirit? Physicians who address these issues “often find that their enjoyment of practice returns,” says radiologist Peter S. Moskowitz, director of the Center for Professional and Personal Renewal in Palo Alto, CA. “That’s when they change their mind about wanting to leave.”
3. Take a vacation. Get away for at least seven days, says Ryan, and completely disconnect from your practice: no e-mail, no phone calls. Give yourself a few days to unwind and clear your head before you begin to contemplate the future.
Another way to give yourself a breather is to do something really different for an extended period. After critical care specialist Bruce W. Sherman left his post at a Cleveland teaching hospital, where he was on call 12 nights of every 14, he spent a challenging but gratifying six weeks volunteering at a squatters’ camp in Zimbabwe. The experience was so “emotionally rich” that he took another month off before looking for his next paying job. It was in that more relaxed frame of mind that he found a part-time job that has since blossomed into a full-time—and fulfilling—position as a medical director of clinical quality services.”
To view this entire article and find similar articles on the topic of career change, please visit the Medical Economics website.
