COVID has transformed the workplace and workplace attitudes. Sickcare and healthcare professionals are no exception. Many are finding that the job or career they have is no longer what they signed up for and they are neither willing nor able to adapt. Many don’t want to work for their boss any more or want to work from home.
If you are a physician or other sickcare professional, now is the time to reconsider your career strategy. Why?
- The environment has radically changed
- There is no job security
- The opportunities to serve your purpose in medicine have expanded
- You might need to find another job or career because you have to
- Burn out is pervasive and where you work is both physically and emotionally toxic.
- The rapidly changing sickcare delivery landscape and business models and forcing doctors to make choices without an full understanding of the implications or with incomplete information
- Generational attitudes and the medical student and clinician persona has changed
- Physicians are trying to reconnect to the lost tribe of medicine
- Technology has radically changed who does what work and subsequent income inequality
- The corporatization of medicine threatens physician mastery, independence and purpose
The medical education establishment is reassessing their purpose and business models. Are they in the business of educating doctors to just take care of patients, or, are they in the business of educating and training doctors to do what they choose to do to help patients, including non-clinical or alternate career pathways? In fact, do they consider themselves a business at all?
Medical students , trainees and clinicians shouldn’t wait for an answer. Take control of your career and plan now.
Arlen Meyers,MD, MBA is the President and CEO of the Society of Physician Entrepreneurs
