attending

Medical Practice Settings: A Quick Guide for Young Physicians

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practice settings

For a physician about to finish residency or fellowship, the differences in practice types may seem unclear. Each type of practice has its own positives and negatives, and some may be a better fit for your career needs.

If you are starting your job search, or at least thinking about your future practice options, you should be weighing the pros and cons of each practice type. Keep reading to see the upsides and downsides of each and how they differ from a residency or fellowship training environment.

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Jump Starting Your Job Search While In Medical School: Part 2

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Read  about steps 1 and 2 in Part 1 of this series  here.
Right now, your number one priority is, very understandably, focusing on your medical school workload. Still, it’s never too early to start thinking about your job search. There are easy steps you can take now that will prepare you for your job search and give you a competitive advantage when it’s time to start applying. 

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Financial Literacy for the Newly Minted Physician Part II: Introduction to Do-It-Yourself Investing

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In our last installment, we recognized the value of money as a means of allotting your time in accordance with your values; identified financial independence for physicians as a goal worth pursuing from the earliest stages of your medical training; and discussed poor decisions that physicians commonly make, with the hope that we might tame the impulse to buy a new car or an irrationally expensive home fresh out of med school or residency.

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Financial Literacy for the Newly Minted Physician: Part One

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“Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. He who understands it, earns it…he who doesn’t, pays it.
-Albert Einstein
Your Life Of Abundance
The first thing to note about your life the day after you finish residency is that, despite the fashionable whining of your peers, yours has been an existence of relative abundance: You have likely never driven a nicer car, earned a higher salary, or had greater autonomy.
In 2014, the average resident salary one year out of medical school was $51,000 (Medscape). For perspective, in 2014 the median U.S. household income was $53,657 (U.S. Census Bureau). Given that the median household size was 2.54, a new, single intern fared better than most families that year (Statista).

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Things I Didn't Realize About Medicine Until I Became a Physician

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became a physician

Recently SDN member medinquirer noted that it’s common for premed students to learn about medicine through shadowing, volunteering, working in related fields, etc. But surely, said medinquirer in his post, there are things you don’t realize about medicine until after you become a full-fledged, practicing physician. What are those things? Here are some of them of them, as shared by members of the SDN community:
SurfingDoc:
No one teaches you about billing, prior authorizations, etc. until to have to do them. There is no real “education” in those endeavors, but they are part of the system and a requirement of the job.

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A Comprehensive Guide To Medical Career Interviews

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Interviews are often  stressful—even for those who have gone on countless interviews. The best way to reduce the stress is to be prepared. These tips will help you through the entire interviewing process and ensure that you not only impress your interviewer but also know if the facility is the right place for you.

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Academic Medicine? No way! (But are you so sure?)

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The doctor business is win-win: doctor wins, patient wins. In sharp contrast, the legal profession is a win-lose dichotomy. That is one reason why we choose medicine. It is a huge difference in psychology that gets into our very bones. Becoming a doctor is a highly noble pursuit. Being a doctor is fun, exciting, worthwhile, productive and assuredly positive. Doctors create wealth in the world by increasing the ability of people to pursue their happiness. What in the physical realm could be more worthwhile than that?
But medicine can be an all-consuming life choice. Before embarking on it, ask yourself if you can tolerate sacrificing a large percentage of everything else you enjoy to do, and everyone you like to be with, for a long time. The job is great. No doubt about it. But don’t naively minimize the sacrifices. Is it worth the sacrifice? Don’t let anyone other than you decide that.

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Medical School Application Secondary Essays

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You finally submitted your medical school primary application and think you can rest when, starting some time in late June, you start receiving secondary essay prompts—just about every day.
Overwhelmed, you start to wonder why you applied to so many medical schools. Most applicants (except those with exceptional grades, MCATs, and experiences) should apply broadly to a wide range of schools, but doing so translates into writing a whole bunch of secondary essays, which can be daunting.

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20 Questions: Richard A. Sheff, MD, Author, Family Medicine

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Richard A. Sheff, author of Doctor Confidential: Secrets Behind the Veil, is a Rhode Island family physician with over 30 years of experience in medicine. Dr. Sheff received his MD from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine before serving his residency with Brown University Division of Family Medicine at The Memorial Hospital in Pawtucket, Rhode Island.
After practicing family medicine in Massachusetts for 12 years and teaching at Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston for a decade, Dr. Sheff launched a company, CommonWell, with the goal of helping the healthcare system integrate the best of complementary and alternative medicine with the best of conventional medicine. He also began consulting with hospitals and physician organizations in the U.S. and internationally.

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