As you may have noticed from a post a couple of days ago, there were some Scrubs references in the cover letter examples. John Dorian is the name of Zach Braff’s character, JD, and the hospital janitor has called himself Dr. Jan Itor on at least one occasion. When Grunt Doc noticed and commented on it, I thought I’d just mention it quickly.

While Scrubs clearly isn’t the most accurate show when it comes to procedures and terminology, I think it gets to the heart of being in the field of medicine more than any other show. ER was too angsty and never showed the gallows humor that is required in that field. Saint Elsewhere was a soap opera, Chicago Hope was a showcase of zany characters, House is a miracle an episode, and Grey’s Anatomy is something I just can’t get into.

But Scrubs shows physicians (and nurses and surgeons and patients and lawyers) who are people, and it manages to avoid stereotypes and cliches as much as possible. The first three seasons of Scrubs are among some of the best shows on television, with a balance between comedy and drama that is very hard to maintain. In recent seasons, the writers have gotten a little lazy, although the last few episodes show the promise of its initial premise.

I know we have plenty of physician and resident lurkers who don’t comment, but I’d love to hear your comments on this show. And if you haven’t seen it, when you get your next day off, look for an episode on TV - it’s in reruns on about three different stations right now.

Kelly is one of the staff of writers for The Doctor Job. Do you need your personal statement edited, or do you need help in writing one from the beginning? Click here for more information.

If you are a medical student or an FMG, finding out that you didn’t Match can feel overwhelming. What can you do? Is it you? Did you fail? Are you doomed?

Don’t worry. You still have plenty of options, and maybe you can turn things around if you make sure that you’re properly informed and educated. Here are a few tips that might help you in the future.

• Even after the Scramble, positions may open up. There are many upcoming interns and residents who did Match that may drop out, change their minds, or have something happen to their situation that keeps them from showing up in July. From now until August, you should be in constant contact with every program that interests you to make sure that if they lose one of their incoming residents, you’re there to get your resume and personal statement and application faxed to them instantly.
• If you are a foreign medical graduate, make a concerted effort to get some more clinical experience. Volunteer, low pay, whatever you need to do. Don’t be afraid to go door to door with a resume and brief letter until you’ve hit every clinic and practice in town. Make sure your resume is perfect by US standards and that your cover letter is in flawless English, though. Once you get that clinical experience, make sure you get a letter of recommendation from every US physician with whom you worked.
• Assess your interviewing skills. If you are too shy or too aggressive, or even somewhere in the middle, you may have turned off the program director from the beginning. Most major cities have people who work from home doing career coaching. Spend the time and money to get a session or two with them - learn what your weak spots are, and figure out how to overcome them. You want your next interviewing experience to be amazing.
• Redraft your personal statement, as well. It may very well be that your thesis wasn’t clear enough or your concepts were cliched and trite. Try a totally different approach, or use a service to make sure that yours is absolutely perfect.
• Research the Match. Read the information that is released about it so that you understand the process exactly. Assuming that you know the process is careless.
• Learn about your specialties, too. You might find out that your specialty is so hard to get into that with your grades, background and USMLE scores, you are better off trying a different specialty.

Some of these may seem obvious. But the important thing is to take a step back, look at what you’ve done in the past and see if changing some of those things will help you in the future. One thing is for certain - you will never Match if you continue to do the exact same thing each year. Improving your skills, improving your application, and improving yourself is the only way to make sure that next year is a rousing success!

William here. Go read <a href=”http://pandabearmd.com/blog/2006/03/22/the-residency-match-part-3/
title=”Panda Bear, MD” rel=”external”>Panda Bear, MD’s blog</a> for an excellent discussion of the Match, as well.

Let’s assume that you are looking for a job without using a recruiter. You’re searching the smart way - reaching employers with a resume and a cover letter to see if you can drum up some interest in what you have to offer. The cover letter can be a challenge, because while you might be trained well in the practice of medicine, nobody has ever trained you how to sell yourself.

Your cover letter

Your cover letter should not be longer than three paragraphs. It should be in basic business letter format, with the only exception being your name and address. If you have your name and address set up as a header on your resume, make the one on your cover letter match it exactly. Here is an example:

John Dorian, MD

---

369 Main Street, Apt 1003; Miami, FL 33144
(305) 555-1234 | (305)-555-2222
jdandturkforever@yahoo.com

The date should be flush left with a space below it. Then you should have the address to which you’re writing, with the name of the person, their title, the organization or group name, their address, and then their city, state and zip, all on respective lines, followed by the salutation, like this:

March 16, 2007

Dr. Jan I. Tor
Medical Specialists of California
1234 Medicare Ln, Suite 200
Pasadena, CA 90014

Dear Dr. Tor,

Paragraph 1:

Your first paragraph is an intro paragraph. You should only write two or three sentences. The fewer words you can use to get your point across, the better. Here’s an example:

I am a third-year Internal Medicine resident who is graduating this summer from Miami-Dade International Medical Institute. Since I have family in Los Angeles, I plan on moving there in July and am currently looking for an opportunity to practice in a hospitalist environment. As a result, I have enclosed my resume for your review and consideration.

See? This is just a simple paragraph saying who you are, what you’re looking for, and why the recipient should care.

Paragraph 2:

The second paragraph is the trickier part. This is where you have to sell yourself. There are thousands of graduating residents in Internal Medicine every year, so what makes you special? Have you been involved in any unusual procedures? Did you get awarded anything for your efforts during residency? Is your hospital known for any certain type of technology or other aspect that might give you a benefit? Do you have an interesting background? Any of these things can help to make this second paragraph something that interests the employer enough to keep reading. For our hypothetical resident, here’s an example of what he might say:

I have consistently been a top performer throughout my medical training—I graduated at the top of my class from medical school, and I am currently among the top residents of my program, always scoring either first or second during my in-service exams and winning the honor of “Resident of the Year” for two consecutive years. I also have an extremely high patient satisfaction rate, and I have found that I am extremely capable at balancing the quality of my care with the quantity of patients I can see. In my current program, I am considered to be conscientious, knowledgeable, and a team player.

This paragraph brings out a few points that may interest an employer just enough to continue to the resume, which is where the real magic happens anyway. This is not the place to list all of your accomplishments - just give a summary of a couple of them that might set you apart from the other candidates.

Paragraph 3:

The third paragraph is a quick conclusion. Just try to reiterate who are you and what you want. Don’t get bogged down in details:

If you are interested in an intelligent, well-trained Internist who will work hard and maintain the high level of quality that your hospital is known for, please contact me at your earliest convenience to schedule an interview. I look forward to hearing from you.

Very simple, but it gets to the point. And the best part is that the whole letter only takes about 30 seconds to read. If it takes longer, there is a smaller chance of it being read at all.

The Closing

Close it off with “Sincerely”, “Best regards”, or “Yours truly”, then leave a few spaces, and type your name. Underneath your name, type “Enclosure”. This means that the resume is enclosed:

Best regards,

John Dorian, MD
Enclosure

And you’re done! Just sign your name, put it with your resume (which you’ve already edited after reading our past articles, right?) and send it off.

Today, we’ll take the time to answer two questions out of the many that we’ve received from physicians and medical students. If you too have questions related in any way to finding a job, getting into a program, or specializing in an specific field, please email them to blog AT thedoctorjob DOT com!

Q: I am a Psychiatrist who had my license suspended for inappropriate conduct with a patient. I now have a restricted license where I can practice, but only under supervision for a year, and then I get my full license back. Recruiters won’t return my calls. Am I out of luck?

A: Unfortunately for your situation, most groups and hospitals are going to steer clear of you until you have a free and clear license, and even then you’re going to hit some speedbumps. However, I said “most”, not all. Let’s assume there are 2000 psychiatric groups in a state. Maybe 1400 of them wouldn’t give your resume more than a cursory glance. But this means that there are probably 600 out there that would, and maybe once they met you and talked to you face-to-face, they’d be willing to give you the benefit of the doubt. When you are in a situation like this, and you’re looking for a job, you’re not looking for what the majority of employers will think, say and do. You’re looking for the minority. And in the end, all you need is 1 group out of 2000 to give you a chance.

Now, the difficult part is finding these groups. Chances are, they’re pretty well-hidden. They’re less likely to use recruiters, and they probably don’t advertise online or in journals. So what you need to do is find them. At this point, I could just recommend that you let The Doctor Job work for you, but that’s only if you want to. If you have the time and want to put forth the effort, you can try to do this on your own.

Using your PDR or state directory of Psychiatrists, enter every single one of them into an Excel spreadsheet. Get their first name, last name, and address, all in different columns. Then, create a brief cover letter. Don’t go into too much detail - this is just an introductory letter, not an autobiography - and do a mail merge with all 2,000 names. Print them out, with your resume (shouldn’t be more than one, maybe two pages) and envelopes for each one. It’s okay to use a #10 envelope - folding the letter will not hurt anything.

Sign all of your cover letters, stuff the envelopes, put stamps on them and stick them in the mail. Don’t do 100 or 200 at a time - try to get them all out there at once. This will give you a smaller window of highly concentrated responses, which will let you make the best decision and the best choices.

And voila! Even if only .1% of the letters you send out results in a job for you, that’s 2 job offers. If your response rate is higher, you could have 20-40 or more positive responses! And when you have an unencumbered license again, you’ll realize that this approach gives you the ability to choose the best job available in the job market, not just the best job advertised. That’s a huge difference that most physicians miss. Good luck!

Q: I’m an Internist who is single with no family. Right now, my only desire is to earn as much as I can, pay off my student loans, and set aside some significant savings. However, since I’m single, I don’t want to work anywhere that recruiters suggest because everything’s in the middle of nowhere. I’d like to be in a big city where I can maintain an active social life. How can I maximize my income in this type of area?

A: Well, since you want an active social life, we’re assuming that you don’t want to move around from city to city for a year or six months at a time. That leaves out locum tenens work. So, if you’re looking for a relatively long-term position that will earn you the most income in a major city, there are a couple of things you can do.

Many physicians in your situation will say they’re completely open to any big city in the country. This seems like it would be the best way to do it, but it actually increases their chances of taking a lower paying job. Because who do you think she’s announcing it to? That’s right: physician recruiters. And the recruiters’ only goal is to convince that physician to take a job in their city. This means that even if the physician gets offers through recruiters from every major city, she isn’t taking the highest-paying job in the country. All she’s getting is the highest paying job through a recruiter. This means, for those of you new to the reality of the job market, is that most jobs in bigger cities that are unavailable through recruiters pay up to $20,000-$25,000 more than those advertised with recruiters! So even if she thinks she’s taken the perfect job, she’s just missed out on quite a bit more money.

So, how do you make sure you maximize your income? Well, first, figure out which city you’re the most interested in. Are you a warm weather person? Los Angeles or Miami might do the trick. Do you like the coast but don’t mind the cold? Maybe DC or New York City would be the best. Whatever decision you make can help you make the most of your job search.

Then, contact every physician recruiter that covers that city. Make it explicit that you’re only interested in that city and the surrounding area. Get all available options from them.

Next, use all of your personal contacts - friends from medical school, residents and attendings, your program director, family members - whoever you can gather, and see if any of them have any ties to groups in that area. Anything that is the smallest thread can be exploited for at least an introduction to the group.

Finally, get your name out there. Whether you use a service like The Doctor Job or not, send your resume out to everyone that you possibly can. You should be sending out at least 1000 resumes or more. Plan on getting about 25-40 phone calls or more of interest.

Once you’ve got everyone who’s actually interested in you, start your interviewing. Don’t eliminate any group until you’ve had a chance to investigate them or talk to them in depth. The more interviewing you can do, the more confident you’ll be, which means the better chances you’ll have of getting more offers.

After the interviewing period, if you did this correctly, you should have at least 5 and maybe as many as 25 offers for positions. The salaries offered will vary widely, too. We’ve seen ranges of between $100,000 - $240,000 for the same physician looking in one city! It all depends on the size of the group, how lucrative their practice is, how much they need someone, the level of responsibility you’ll get, etc.

Now here’s the important part. This is the part that 90% of physicians forget or ignore. They might be worried about it, or maybe they don’t think it’s necessary. But they’re missing out. Negotiate.

With even the simplest of negotiations, salaries and benefits can vary as much as $10,000-$15,000. If you’re in great demand, you have even more power, which means that you should be able to increase your salary, bonus, and other benefits by as much as $30,000-$40,000. However, be careful. Negotiation doesn’t mean being angry, uncooperative, and unprofessional. It requires some subtlety - letting a group know that you like them the best, but that another group is offering you more money, so you’re in a tough place, and you were hoping that the first group might be able to make it easier for you to make your decision. That’s what works, and if you follow these guidelines, you should be making good money and enjoying your social life in no time!

Another resident who can’t believe his luck:

Dr. E. will be practicing Family Medicine in Santa Barbara

Dr. E is currently doing his Family Practice residency in the Northwest. It’s cold, wet, rainy, and dark, and he wasn’t having the best time. Coming from Southern California, all he wanted was to move back home, be close to his aging parents, and practice medicine in the warmth and sunshine.

As you can imagine, every physician recruiter out there shot him down. “It’s too saturated.” “There are no jobs on the coast of Southern California.” “Why don’t you look in the desert -there are jobs there.”

Frustrated, he consulted with his program director, who gave him a letter talking about The Doctor Job. This program director, like hundreds around the country, knew that The Doctor Job provided a better service to his or her residents than any physician recruiting company, and encouraged Dr. E to try us out.

After speaking with Dr. E, we decided that since his goal was not Los Angeles but Santa Barbara, we would focus on the coastal Santa Barbara/Ventura County area. This way, he would be close enough to his family that he could visit easily but also have his own space to raise his own family. Even though the typical client of The Doctor Job sends out between 1000-2000 resumes, his market only had around 850. We were confident, though, that he would experience great success. Dr. E was a bit nervous, since he was still a resident and making a resident stipend (which everyone knows is not very high), but we knew that his investment would pay off in the long run.

One month went by, and we received a phone call from Dr. E. He received over 40 phone calls and emails of interest in response to our mailing - that’s a response rate of almost 5%! Out of those responses, he narrowed it down to the 10 opportunities that appeared, over the phone, to give him the best pay and environment matching his specific needs.

One of the interviews is with the best, highest-paying, most desirable primary care group in the area. This group didn’t have any job openings, but since our services entailed sending a resume to each physician in the group, they all forwarded it to the medical director of the group. Since he got so many of Dr. E’s resumes, he made the decision that this resident must really have something special. The medical director called Dr. E and told him that he was creating a special position just for him!

Since Dr. E would never have found this position without our services, and it’s with a group that even occasionally uses recruiters, we here at The Doctor Job definitely felt some pride at this story. Good luck, Dr. E!

The Doctor Job has compiled a list of advice based on horror stories we’ve heard from physician employers, physician recruiters and the physicians who were applying and interviewing for positions. Some of these are obvious, some are not, but they’re all things to think about:

• Make sure that your email address and phone number on your resume are correct. Double and triple-check them. Do NOT assume that they are!
• Use a professional email address, like “janedoemd@gmail.com”. Do not use a personal email address like “partygrrl77@yahoo.com”.
• Before you go to an interview, use mouthwash, chew a piece of gum, or eat a mint, especially if you’ve recently eaten anything pungent.
• Never joke in an interview about politics or religion. In any situation. Ever.
• If you have to blow your nose before you go into an interview, go into a bathroom and check for stragglers.
• Never use profanity or any type of slang on your resume, cover letter, or in an interview.
• If you are going to put hobbies on your resume, never put “watersports”. It has a connotation that can be very negative.
• Remember to take off your latex gloves before going into an interview. If you forget, and have to take them off in the interview, do not accidentally let one snap off and hit the interviewer in the face.
• When negotiating an offer, do not start with a number that’s less than the initial offer, even if you think it’s a savvy negotiating tool to confuse the employers. They might take you up on it.
• Make sure to take off the Post-it note that says “I think these idiots will give me another $20K” before faxing your signed contract to your new employer.
• There’s never any reason to carry any type of weapon into an interview. There’s even less of a reason to brandish it, even jokingly.
• When you send a thank you note after your interview, make sure it doesn’t say “Dear Mr. FILLINHERE, Thank you for letting me interview at GROUPNAMEHERE.”
• If your resume or cover letter has more colors than black and white, you should re-think them.
• Finally, never, ever, ever, proposition the employer by offering sexual favors if they hire you. It will not work, and it was a bad, bad idea!

If you are going to put your resume on a physician job board, here is an important tip for keeping your sanity. Without proper email maintenance, you will likely miss important emails and waste time on the useless ones. There’s no reason you shouldn’t be able to easily and cleanly keep track of who you want to talk to and who you don’t.

Intelligent Email Maintenance

When you put your information up on a job board, you are going to get inundated with emails. This is not an exaggeration. You will literally get hundreds of emails from physician recruiters.

Many physicians will just create a throwaway email account for each job board, or each time they look for a job. This is a waste of time and effort. If you follow these steps, you can keep your Inbox clean and your sanity intact without missing any important job-related emails.

1. Use Gmail. If you don’t already have an account, set up a new one. Make your username something professional, like “drjohnsmith@gmail.com” or “johnsmithmd@gmail.com”.

2. Go to the job board of your choice. Create a new account there, and when it asks you to provide your email address, don’t give your actual email address! Instead, add a “+” and the name of the job board to the first part of your email address. For example, if your email address is “johnsmith@gmail.com”, and the job board is PhysicianWork, the email address you use should be “johnsmith+physicianwork@gmail.com”.

3. Fill out the rest of the information normally, then return to Gmail.

4. Click on “Settings” on the top right of the page.

5. Click on the “Filters” tab.

6. Select “Create a New Filter”.

7. In the field for “To:”, write the job board name. In our example, it would be “physicianwork”.

8. Go to “Next Step”.

9. Check the boxes that say “Skip the Inbox” and “Apply the Label”. Go down to “New Label”, and type in the name of the job board.

10. Click “Create Filter”.

And that’s it! From now on, when email comes in from that job board, it will be automatically archived and labeled. It won’t clog up your Inbox, but you can easily see all of the messages from that particular job board. At the bottom left of your Gmail screen, you’ll see a module called “Labels”. When you have new email matching that label, the label’s name will become bold and show in parentheses the number of new messages. Just click the label to view those emails! And now, repeat this for each job board that you want to submit your resume to. By keeping different labels for different job boards, you’ll be able to easily and quickly keep your notes and emails organized.

You can read a similar interview article at the career center on our main site. Here is a helpful guide about interviewing for a job, whether you’re a resident, fellow, or physician:

Guide for physicians: How to interview

Unfortunately, many medical schools can be lacking when it comes to career counseling. This is usually due to the fact that many graduates go on to residency training, which means that any career counseling they will need won’t be for four or more years later. This means that many physician employers consider interviewing to be a major weakness of physicians, even though it is such an essential part of the hiring decision..

One of the most important things to understand is that your interview is a two-way street. The physician being interviewed and the physician or other person interviewing are both trying to “sell” each other on the resume or the position. With this knowledge, a physician should be able to walk into an interview without feeling like they are the one on display. However, the physician cannot neglect proper preparation, protocol, and procedures when it comes to interviewing.

The physician interview: first impressions

When you are contacted by an employer, try to be personable and upbeat. There is a tendency among physicians to be a bit concise on the phone, which might come across as rude, even if it’s due to a busy schedule and very little free time. Just be careful not to give the impression that your time is more important than the caller’s.

Scheduling the time for your interview can present its own challenges. Try to schedule your interview for the time of day that you’re at your best. If you are a morning person, the earlier the better. But if you can’t think until after three cups of coffee, maybe the afternoon would be more appropriate. Additionally, try to avoid meeting after a 24-hour shift or at the end of a long week. Your interview is an investment in your future, and you need to make sure that you make adequate time for it.

The “Do”s and “Don’t”s of Interviewing

Do:

• Arrive on time. Plan your schedule so that you anticipate arriving at least 15-20 minutes early in case traffic is bad, you get lost, or something unknown occurs.
• Be courteous to everyone you meet. A receptionist who finds you rude could have a great impact on your ability to get a position, regardless of how smooth you come across in the actual interview.
• Try on your interview clothes before you leave for your destination if you are traveling long distance. There is nothing worse than finding out that something doesn’t fit right 10 minutes before your interview when you are 300 miles from your closet.
• Have a firm, solid handshake. A limp, weak handshake never makes a good impression.
• Stay calm and maintain eye contact. You don’t have to stare, but keep consistent visual contact with the interviewer’s general facial area. Looking at their eyes, forehead, lips or chin is important, so that the interviewer knows you are paying attention.
• Ask questions. Asking questions shows that you were listening to and digesting the information the employer presented. It also conveys your genuine interest in learning more about the organization. Research the employer (and interviewer, if possible) extensively so that you can ask thoughtful, intelligent questions.
• Remember that there are two major questions that every interviewer wants answered. Are you able to do the job and do it well? Will you be manageable as an employee or part of a partnership? If you can answer these questions to the employer’s satisfaction, you will get the job.
• Establish rapport. Remember the interviewer’s name, and use it a few times throughout the interview. Show interest in the conversation. Ask questions, smile when appropriate, and laugh when jokes are told (regardless of how bad).
• Send a thank you note after your interview. It is proper etiquette, and employers appreciate the gesture.

Don’t:

• Arrive too early. While it’s good to allow an extra cushion of time, you don’t want to throw off the interviewer by arriving at the office more than five minutes ahead of schedule. If you’re early, walk around the block and grab a cup of coffee, or read the newspaper for a few minutes at a café before making your presence known.
• Neglect to prepare. Ask colleagues and family members for help with mock interviewing and practice questions. Finally, make sure to stay current in your field so that you can discuss any news in the field.
• Forget that interviews are an artificial situation in which the interviewer has power. This can cause you to feel overly pressured to act a certain way, which in turn will seem false and forced. Anxiety will interfere with your ability to answer questions intelligently. The more relaxed and natural you can be, the more likely it is that the interviewer will get a realistic impression of you.
• Be disrespectful during the interview. Never talk down to the interviewer. Be polite, listen carefully, and do not argue under any circumstances.
• Forget that interviewers are not always trained in interviewing. You may find an interviewer rambling on about the position and the practice without asking you any questions about yourself. In this situation, it is okay to exert a little control over the process by discussing your strengths and explaining some key points that you want to get across.
• Discuss politics and religion. These topics should be avoided at all cost.
• Lie or be negative. Honesty is the best policy, but if someone asks you about a former employer with whom you had a hostile relationship, be tactful. It’s better to focus on strengths and positives than to give the interviewer the impression that you are not an easy person to work with.
• Ask about salary unless the interviewer brings it up first. Even if the interview does bring it up, you shouldn’t discuss specifics. Focus instead on a salary range and don’t reveal exactly what you made in your last position. Detailed salary discussions should occur after an offer has been extended.
• Forget that bias still exists. For example, it is generally regarded that an overweight applicant will have a more difficult time in an interview than a thin applicant. If you are overweight, you can avoid this bias by dressing well and making sure that your clothes fit well. During the interview, be as positive and high energy as you can. Focus on your strong work ethic and you should be able to overcome any stereotype of overweight people as lazy and lacking in energy.

Difficult Interview questions: What is your biggest weakness?

This is a difficult question for which there is no real “right” answer. But we can offer some guidance for an appropriate response.

First of all, don’t say that you’re a perfectionist or that you work too much. It is overused and clichéd, and employers will see through it. The better approach to this question is to explain a weakness that does not truly affect your ability to work, and then explain the steps you have taken to overcome it.

Some examples:

1. “I have traditionally been very shy, but by challenging myself with public speaking, I have made considerable progress towards increased confidence and a more outgoing personality.”
2. (For a foreign medical graduate) “When I first came to the United States, I spoke little to no English, but I have spent the last several years taking English courses and improving my ability to reach a perfect fluency.”
3. “It has always been difficult to delegate work to other people, which means that I usually end up wasting time on busy work that could have been used more productively. However, once I started training, I’ve learned to let the staff do their job so that I can do mine more effectively.”

Conclusion: Confidence is key

When interviewing, even the smartest, hardest working physician is competing against other equally intelligent and motivated physicians. It can be foolish to rely solely on one’s credentials - be smart about your job search and understand the interviewing process to make yourself the best possible candidate.

In addition, practice makes perfect. Time permitting, accept every single interview you are offered, even if you don’t feel that the position presents the ideal fit. The more interviews you go on, the more comfortable you will feel, and the more exposure you will have to the types of questions asked.

Finally, keep in mind that interviewers are as eager to find a good fit as you are. Before you sit down to an interview, take a deep breath and focus your attention on all of those things that make you a good candidate. When you are feeling confident internally, you will portray yourself as someone worth getting to know.

One of The Doctor Job’s recent clients enjoyed the free calculators we sent him when we sent him his package of resumes, cover letters, and envelopes for his job search. He decided to go back to the old calculator tricks from elementary school and send us a couple of funny pictures. If you’re a past client, and you’ve done something funny with the swag we sent, go ahead and email it to us at blog AT thedoctorjob DOT com.

Ah, to be back in the carefree, innocent days of a child when something like this was the funniest thing you’d ever seen!

Today’s post will be a quick discussion of fellowship programs. There are three main reasons that physicians enter fellowship programs, and only one of them is a good reason. Read along and see if you agree.

Reason 1: Because the resident can’t find a job

You would be simply amazed at how many residents go into fellowship in specialties like Geriatrics, Critical Care or Infectious Disease because they don’t think they can find a job after graduating from residency and so they get worried. This is NOT a good reason to do this!

Every resident can find a job where he or she wants to be before graduating. Every. Single. One. If a physician is using recruiters and talking to their program and still can’t find a job, then get aggressive. Network, go to conferences, and get your name out there. Even if you don’t use a service like The Doctor Job, there are many avenues that a physician can pursue before giving up and joining a fellowship for the wrong reason.

What The Doctor Job has discovered is that these fellows tend to be more dissatisfied and have this illusion that when they get out of fellowship, they’ll easily find a job practicing what they want. However, the reality is that most physician employers will get confused. “Why do you want to practice Internal Medicine if you just spent that last year doing Infectious Disease?” they’ll ask. And the fellow will not have a good answer. It actually makes the physician’s career choices more difficult and is more likely to result in a bad working environment for any physician who gives up and doesn’t put forth the necessary effort into finding a job after residency.

Reason 2: Because the physician wants more money

With some exceptions, this is also the wrong reason to go into fellowship. First of all, let’s examine the logic of the situation. Let’s take an Internist who has been practicing for two years, making an annual salary of $155,000, plus bonuses and benefits of another $25,000. He decides that if he was in Pulmonary Medicine/Critical Care, he’d make much more money, so he quits and joins a Pulmonology/Critical Care fellowship program, where he gets an annual stipend of $36,000. For three years, he struggles to care for his family, losing $144,000 each year of his fellowship. By the time he graduates, he has lost $432,000 that he would have earned if he had just stayed at his current job at the same salary.

Once he gets out, he starts a new job as a Critical Care physician, making an annual salary of $200,000. While this sounds like a good raise, the physicians at his old practice who started with him and didn’t quit to go to fellowship actually make $175,000 plus bonus of $25,000, now. So not only are they making almost the same amount of money, but they didn’t lose $432,000 in potential income!

Now, this isn’t the case with all situations, but if a physician expects a serious lifestyle change and significant income increases, make sure to research before embarking on a fellowship.

Reason 3: Because the physician wants to sub-specialize

Now here is a good reason. Many physicians feel unfulfilled in their current job. If they continue working in their general specialty, they will eventually burn out and leave the practice of medicine completely. Rather than having that happen, going to a fellowship program for a sub-specialty is a good way to revitalize their practice of medicine.

It’s important for the physician to avoid randomly choosing a sub-specialty. Moving from one type of practice to another without researching it will make it just as likely that the physician will be unhappy in the new job. However, if the physician takes the time to research the different fellowship programs that are available and makes a decision based on the area that is the most interesting, there is a much higher chance of continued happiness in the medical profession.

So, in conclusion, if you decide to go to a fellowship, be smart about it. Don’t do it for the wrong reasons, because you’ll likely find yourself in a worse position than before. But if you do it for the right reasons, you should be happy and fulfilled in your career.