In this episode of the PNC Podcast, John describes how to overcome damaging National Practitioner Databank reports that can interfere with a job search. 

This topic is based on a question from a listener. The physician was concerned that NPDB entries were limiting his ability to land a new clinical position. And he was looking for strategies to overcome this challenge.

Our Episode Sponsor

Dr. Armin Feldman's Prelitigation Pre-trial Medical Legal Consulting Coaching Program

The Medical Legal Consulting Coaching Program will teach you to build a nonclinical consulting business. Open to physicians in ANY specialty, completing Dr. Armin Feldman’s Program will teach you how to become a valued consultant to attorneys without doing med mal cases or expert witness work.

His program will enable you to use your medical education and experience to generate a great income and a balanced lifestyle. Dr. Feldman will teach you everything, from the business concepts to the medicine involved, to launch your new consulting business during one year of unlimited coaching.

For more information, go to nonclinicalphysicians.com/mlconsulting or arminfeldman.com.

Our Sponsor

We're proud to have the University of Tennessee Physician Executive MBA Program, offered by the Haslam College of Business, as the sponsor of this podcast.

The UT PEMBA is the longest-running, and most highly respected physician-only MBA in the country. It has over 700 graduates. And, the program only takes one year to complete. 

By joining the UT Physician Executive MBA, you will develop the business and management skills you need to find a career you love. To learn more, contact Dr. Kate Atchley’s office at (865) 974-6526 or go to nonclinicalphysicians.com/physicianmba.

For Podcast Listeners

• John hosts a short weekly Q&A session on topics related to physicians' careers and leadership. Each discussion is posted for you to review and apply. Sometimes all it takes is one insight to take you to the next level of your career. Check out the Weekly Q&A and join us for only $5.00 monthly.
• If you want access to dozens of lessons dedicated to nonclinical and unconventional clinical careers, you should join the Nonclinical Career Academy MemberClub. For a small monthly fee, you can access the Weekly Q&A Sessions AND as many lessons and courses as you wish. Click the link to check it out, and use the Coupon Code “FIRSTMONTHFIVE” to get your first month for only $5.00.
• The 2024 Nonclinical Summit is over. But you can access all the fantastic lectures from our nationally recognized speakers, including Dr. Dike Drummond, Dr. Nneka Unachukwu, Dr. Gretchen Green, and Dr. Mike Woo-Ming. Go to Nonclinical Summit and enter Coupon Code “30-OFF” for a $30 discount.

Understanding the Impact of NPDB Reports

John describes his analysis, based on an understanding of the requirements of the NPDB for reporting:

• potential employers that are required to query it,
• those that may or may not choose to do so, and
• those unlikely to do so.

He lists several employer types that may query the Databank, yet be more lenient when evaluating a potential candidate. He then lists situations in which a databank query would be unlikely.

Minimizing Damaging National Practitioner Databank Reports

With these considerations in mind, he suggests several possible options to pursue as an employee and several practice options that would require starting a practice. The least costly of the practice start-ups would most likely be a cash-based business.

A Direct Primary Care Practice, Weight Loss Clinic, Med Spa, or similar business, in which the need to bill health insurers is eliminated, generally requires fewer staff and no expensive billing software, and eliminates NPDB inquiries from insurers. 

Summary

Physicians facing credentialing barriers can explore several alternative clinical career paths. If the physician has addressed the issues that led to the reports, there are several clinical practice options to consider as an employee or as a business owner if the physician prefers not to leave clinical medicine. If that is no longer a viable option, then a shift to a nonclinical position may be warranted.

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The post How To Beat Damaging National Practitioner Databank Reports appeared first on NonClinical Physicians.

In today's podcast, John dispels the myths about alternative jobs for clinicians.

Our Sponsor

We're proud to have the University of Tennessee Physician Executive MBA Program, offered by the Haslam College of Business, as the sponsor of this podcast.

The UT PEMBA is the longest-running, and most highly respected physician-only MBA in the country. It has over 700 graduates. And, the program only takes one year to complete. 

By joining the UT Physician Executive MBA, you will develop the business and management skills you need to find a career that you love. To find out more, contact Dr. Kate Atchley’s office at (865) 974-6526 or go to nonclinicalphysicians.com/physicianmba.

Common Myths About Alternative Jobs

Here are the reasons that these common myths about alternative jobs are NOT true.

1.  “There are limited jobs”

There are jobs in pharma and medical device companies, in hospitals and health systems, and in the insurance industry (health, life, and disability insurance). And there are at least five distinct types of medical writing jobs.

There are jobs in consulting and consumer health. The federal government and public health organizations employ thousands of physicians doing nonclinical work.

There are nonprofit companies and educational institutions that need experienced physicians for nonclinical positions.

2. “All I know is medicine.”

As a physician, you have a deep understanding of biochemistry, pharmacology, physiology, microbiology, anatomy, epidemiology, and statistics. There are dozens of domains in which you have extensive training and experience (from informatics to billing to quality improvement). And you are knowledgeable about the healthcare system itself.

3. “My income will drop.”

When you consider the long hours, the medical liability, the frustration, the stress, and the lack of balance in your life, a slight drop in income becomes meaningless. While income may suffer temporarily, it's usually associated with working fewer hours and taking time off for vacations. You're going to sleep better; you're not going to be on call; and you're not going to be sued.

4. “I'm abandoning my patients”

If you're working in pharma, you're creating medications that help patients. As Medical Director for Quality Improvement or CQO you're doing quality and safety in the hospital or outpatient setting and saving lives and improving the safety of those patients. If you're in an insurance company, you're keeping patients from getting the wrong tests and the wrong procedures. And if you're a writer or educator, you're teaching patients, colleagues, or medical students.

So, you will be improving healthcare and helping large numbers of patients rather than the few you would treat individually.

5. “My reputation and influence will decline.”

You're still a physician, leveraging your clinical knowledge. You'll often be managing a team. You're seen as a content expert. And you're often a leader in these positions.

As a primary care doctor in a hospital, you will be just one of many working at that institution. But if you're a medical director or CMO, you are the person that others seek out to improve a process or solve a problem. And your standing and visibility improve.

Getting Started

Once you've accepted that the myths about alternative jobs are NOT true, the next step is to become familiar with as many potential nontraditional jobs as you can. You can do that by downloading a list of 70 nonclinical jobs here and reading books dedicated to the subject, such as Dr. Sylvie Stacy's 50 Nonclinical Careers for Physicians.

Spend time thinking about your personality, interests, and skill sets. Then create a list of jobs that align with those 3 factors, as well as the demand for physicians for those jobs. 

Once you've narrowed the list to one or two options, get to work on learning, preparing a resume and cover letter, networking, finding a mentor or two, and building your LinkedIn profile.

Summary

The bottom line is that there are many alternative job openings for physicians, regardless of background and years in practice. The first step is to overcome limiting beliefs keeping you from looking. Then spend time learning about the nature of available alternative careers.

Furthermore, when you're preparing to pursue an alternative career, it doesn't hurt to stack other skills. And it could be anything: how to do photography; how to read financial statements; or becoming a better public speaker. Simply pick a few and work on them, and you'll find that by adding them to your existing skills, you'll become a unique applicant for one of these new positions.

NOTE: Look below for a transcript of today's episode.

EXCLUSIVE: Get a daily dose of inspiration, information, news, training opportunities, and amusing stories by CLICKING HERE.

Links for Today's Episode:

• Introduction to the World of Nonclinical Careers (Paid courses)
• What Are the Best Resources for Finding a Nonclinical Career? – 195
• Discover Your First Nonclinical Job Even If You Don’t Know Where to Start – 200
• 9 Excellent Books That Will Help Launch Your New Career – 153
• NewScr!pt

Download This Episode:

Right Click Here and “Save As” to download this podcast episode to your computer.

Podcast Editing & Production Services are provided by Oscar Hamilton

Today's PNC Podcast Transcript

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Transcription PNC Podcast Episode 252

How to Kill the Myths About Alternative Jobs for Clinicians

John: All right. My friends and colleagues, as I mentioned, I am going to go through the content of a presentation I did a few months ago. And we're going to talk about some of the myths associated with alternative careers, and how to overcome those. And so, let's just get right into it at this point.

Now I usually tell a short story here. And the reason I do this is because for some of you who are just starting on this journey, it can seem very daunting, but I know of someone and she was not the world's best student, but she made it through high school, graduated a little bit early and then went to junior college and became certified as a respiratory therapist.

She loved her job, and she worked at several big hospitals and some smaller hospitals. And ultimately, she got to the point though, where she was experiencing a lot of frustration and burnout, just the way we as physicians typically do. She was staffed very thinly at the hospital she was working at. She and two or three of her other respiratory therapists had to cover the entire hospital, including the ORs, including the nursery, including the ER. They were running around all day. They were doing 12-hour shifts. They had to all rotate through every third weekend. And so, they were just getting very frustrated. Then the EMRs came into play and those became more and more frustrating and more time consuming.

And she reached a point where she was burnt out and wanted to look for something to do. In the meantime, her mother became quite ill and moved in with her and her husband and ended up dying in their home. The subject of this story, she found out was that there was very great difficulty in finding caregivers to help with her mother, which would free up herself to do other things that needed to be done around the house. Once her mother passed away, there was a very small inheritance and she decided to look into ways of how she could provide a service like the one that she could have really used. And so, she became a franchisee for a company that provided in-home care and she really, really loved it.

Now, mind you, she had no background in finances. She had no MBA or any kind of medical degree or accounting degree or anything of that nature. And she basically was a clinician providing respiratory services. But they trained her. They provided a lot of support. And over a period of a few years, she became very busy and the people loved the service. She actually ended up reaching significantly over a million dollars in annual revenue.

Now, this is a person who had no medical background. The growth in her revenues and earnings increased by double digits. And she really enjoyed what she was doing. And again, mind you, she had no background in management or in finances, no MBA or anything like that.

I tell you this story because this is a situation that you may find yourselves in. You feel as though all you know is medicine. That's a quote that I've heard from many of my listeners. And the reality is you're intelligent, you're resourceful, you're hardworking. And if you can get through med school and residency in particular, you can easily shift or pivot to a nonclinical or alternative career.

That story is about my wife, Kay. And to this day, she's running a very successful business and she's happy that she got into that whole thing and walked away from clinical activities.

All right. So, let's define what an alternative career is. I usually don't include any possible sort of pursuit here, but I try to limit it to things that are based on our medical education, our training and our experience and our knowledge of the healthcare system. And you can usually tell it because it typically will include the term physician or medical in the title of the job. Now, not always. Sometimes we use nonclinical as a synonym for alternative, unconventional, nontraditional. The reason we use those terms sometimes is because they are actually clinical in nature. They're just different and nontraditional, such as locums or DPC practice or things like telemedicine and variations of telemedicine.

So, some of those can be clinical, but they're so different that we lump them in there oftentimes just to be clear. It does not include things like opening a hot dog stand or something like that. Again, just to remember, I said the word physician or medical is in there. So typically, it is something like a physician advisor, medical director, medical writer, executive medical director, chief medical officer, chief medical information officer. And it includes jobs that depend on an MD/DO or MD/DS or equivalent degree.

I like to joke that it does not include running a car wash or managing real estate or becoming a welder, anything like that, although you're free to do that. It's just that it doesn't actually build on your medical knowledge and your experience in the healthcare system. And so, if you want to build on those things and make a higher salary, that's the way you should really go.

Now here's some of the common myths. There are some common myths in anybody looking at career transition, and these are just the kinds of myths or self-limiting beliefs that people have in general, that I'm not going to talk about. Things like "I'm not good enough. I might fail. There's something wrong with me. If I'm leaving this job, it's too much to learn. It's too hard to do." Those are basic common human feelings that occur in any major shift or pivot. But the things that are more common as myths within the nonclinical or alternative career realm are one, "There are limited jobs." Because nobody has heard about these kinds of jobs in the past.

Number two, "All I know is medicine", whatever that means. Medicine is such a vast area, but it's a common thing. It's like you spent your whole life narrowing and niching down. You went from being a generalist and undergrad, and then you went to medical school, okay, it's a little bit broad base, but then you narrowed down for residency and some of you have narrowed down further for fellowship, and you think, "Well, each time I do that, I'm limiting what I can do." But that's not really true because you have to go back and consider everything you've learned in those last 8, 11, 15, 20 years and how it can apply to this next phase of your career.

The myth that "My income will drop", the myth that "I'm abandoning my patients", and the myth that "My reputation and influence will decline." Like I'm no longer a physician, I no longer have that position in my community. Again, I can just tell you right now, the five myths I just said are just that. There are myths. They're not true. And I'm going to spend a few minutes explaining why they're not true.

All right. So, let's go through them individually, quickly here. Limited jobs. Well, there are jobs in pharma and medical device companies, in the hospital and health systems, and in the insurance industry. And that includes health insurance, life insurance, and disability insurance. There are medical writing jobs out there. It's an entire industry of its own. And there's at least five or six types of medical writing. There's consulting, there's consumer health. That means it could include being a coach or teaching people in general about their health and fitness and nutrition. Those kinds of things without having a direct physician-patient relationship.

Government and public health have vast numbers of jobs. There are nonprofits that hire physicians all the time. And then there are lots of educational situations like undergrad and graduate schools and medical schools, and in residencies there where you can be teaching things that don't involve providing direct patient care.

So, let's consider this mental exercise briefly. If you were in a large ship that was sinking, and there were a bunch of people with you on this ship, and you're going to have to split up into different lifeboats and you get to pick one or two of the people that are going with you in your lifeboat. Think about all the different jobs there are and all the different options for people that might be in that boat with you. It could be a teacher, fireman, policeman, or salesperson. It could be anything, somebody in manufacturing, a business owner.

And I'll cut to the chase right now and tell you that if I was going to be stranded alone, there would be two people that I'd want to be in that boat with. That would be an engineer and a physician. The physician has everything covered on the biological, chemical, scientific side of things and health and how to treat injuries and how to recognize rashes, and so on. And the engineer covers the safety and building things and fixing things. Those are the two.

There is a reason why those two would be the most popular, no matter whom you ask. And it's because of your broad exposure to lots of different things, your knowledge in a lot of different areas, that's what you have to pull together to practice medicine. But it's also what you can pull together to do other sorts of alternative careers.

Remember, you have a lot of depth in biochemistry, pharmacology, physiology, microbiology, anatomy, epidemiology, and statistics, which we don't think about a lot. And you can think of another 5 to 10 different domains where you have a lot of training and experience, and you can leverage those. Not to mention everything you know about the healthcare system itself.

What else? You understand laboratory interpretation, physical exam skills, radiography, interviewing, teaching, presenting healthcare, economics, population health, and the list goes on and on. So, you're already suited to a lot of positions. And if you think about it, the reason that these companies are looking at physicians is that they need the physician to either translate something to other physicians and other clinicians. They need to understand how that relationship with a patient works and what it's like to provide medical care and other things that are related that put you in a really good position.

Now, the other common myth is this issue of financial ruin. "How am I going to get paid? And I definitely am not going to get paid the same as I was before. I'm in a very highly skilled and highly paid situation." But you need to understand that there's only a limit to that kind of myth. In other words, how could they attract a physician employee if they weren't paying at least an hourly rate commensurate with what you can do in your practice? So, unless you're a super high paid subspecialist who's pulling down near a million dollars a year or something. If they're going to hire a primary care doctor, if they're going to hire a gastroenterologist or a surgeon or anybody like that, they have to pay at a level that makes it attractive enough to come over to the other side so to speak.

Now, remember that you must consider the hours, the liability, the satisfaction, the stress, the lack of balance or presence of balance in your life. While some physicians do take a little bit of a cut in pay, it's usually also associated with working fewer hours and really taking all of your vacation, your four to six weeks of vacation, if you're employed in one of these positions. You're going to sleep better and you're not going to be on call, you're not going to be sued. And so, you really have to do an apples-to-apples comparison.

Now, just as an example, these are the median salaries that were reported by salary.com recently. It's probably not the end all, and it's very specific to what you're doing, but in general, a physician advisor will make $134,000 a year. Now that's on the low end, granted, and those are really entry level positions. So, if you're doing something like a medical science liaison or some other full-time position in pharma, you're going to be closer to $200,000 for sure. And anything with a medical directorship in a hospital or insurance company, anything like that, the number that's quoted is $296,000 per year.

And chief medical officer, generic using that term, meaning it could be in a hospital or health system, it could be an insurance company, it could be in pharma, but upwards that's over $400,000 a year. And there are many CMOs, chief medical officers who work in hospitals and make a half a million dollars a year.

So, it's really not true that you're going to take a big cut in your pay. You obviously need to plan it. You need to make sure that you have the money available to cover some short-term shortfalls. But once you've made the transition, you demonstrate your skills and your worth, you actually will go up from there. So, there might be that small short episode where the income slows down.

Now, what about your patients? You're abandoning your patients? Well, you're not going to be providing one-on-one direct patient care for the most part, unless you're doing that part-time on the side or something. But think about it. If you're in pharma, you're creating medications and devices that are helping patients. If you are in quality and safety in the hospital setting or elsewhere, you are saving lives, improving the safety of those patients. If you're in an insurance company, you're keeping patients from getting the wrong tests and the wrong procedures and doing the right tests at the right time. And if you're in writing, you're educating and teaching patients or your colleagues or medical students.

So, you're also helping patients that way. We can go down the road. If you're doing consulting, it's to bring a new service, which is also improving care. If you're in the consumer aspect, you're teaching about health, wellness, nutrition, fitness. If you're in the government, you're usually trying to maintain quality and improve quality through CMS and NIH, the CDC, the FDA. Maybe providing some kind of indirect care and supervision of the prison medicine. In a nonprofit area, you're doing accreditations to make sure that people are providing care appropriately and doing things properly and so on and so forth. So, when you get into one of these jobs, you are definitely still providing for improvement in healthcare and helping populations and large numbers of people, rather than just the small numbers you can do individually.

How about reputation and influence? Well, you're still a physician for sure. Everyone will still call your doctor. That's a given. You'll likely be managing a team. You're seen as a content expert. You're often a leader in these positions. And I'll even give you my example. I was one of, I don't know, primary care in the hospital, I was there a hundred or so in doing all kinds of different things, some in the hospital, some outside the hospital. And the medical staff was 300, 400 active medical staff involved and coming and going and all having different things that they needed to do.

But the thing was when I became the medical director and then the chief medical officer, I was the individual at that point. Now I was in a sense at the top of the pyramid at that point, rather than just one of a hundred primary care doctors or one of several hundred physicians on staff there. I was the chief medical officer, the person you had to go to, to solve a problem, or get something taken care of, or ask for a new medicine on the formulary, or get a new bylaw passed or something like that. Really in these roles, you have a different type of reputation and influence, but in general, it's very positive.

You have certain existing skills, attitudes and traits that you want to leverage in this new position. I'll just run down a list of some of these. You're calm, you're composed, you're decisive. You're accountable and reliable. You understand psychology, medications, pharmacology, statistics, epidemiology.

You're usually a pretty good adept and good at communicating. You understand medical records, how to create them, how to store them. You understand documentation and coding. You understand the concepts of indications, contraindications, and other pharma concepts.

You also know quality improvement, patient safety. You may even have a background in that area that includes some epidemiology and statistics. You've probably become more familiar with informatics than you want to be. You're used to leading teams, and you've probably done some public speaking and presentations, and this can all be leveraged into that next job.

Now, you might want to learn a sampling of some of the following list of items, not all, but if you were to learn something about the following things, it might help you depending on which direction you want to go. Healthcare, finances, human resources, contracting, negotiating, writing more from the standpoint of persuasion, rather than let's say writing a technical article. Understanding how to manage others and to work with direct reports. A little deeper into epidemiology and statistics. Understanding marketing, sales and promotion and public speaking. Learn maybe a little bit about leadership. Maybe get some industry specific expertise. And there's a lot of information out there that you can do, and you can get certifications, which are relatively straightforward, required to take an exam, but not a whole lot of time invested in that.

You might learn about recruiting and about public health. That's just a sampling. Remember, when you're preparing to change careers to do an alternative career, it doesn't hurt to stack other skills. And it could be anything. It could be how to do photography. It could be how to get deeply into healthcare finances, more about public speaking. Any of these things I've already listed, pick a few and you'll find that by adding those to your existing list of skills, you become a unique applicant for one of these new positions.

All right. I briefly wanted to mention what's the process, where do I begin? You have to start by recognizing the need to change careers and try to pause, try to take a break and really think about what's going on. Am I unhappy? Am I burnt out? Am I anxious, depressed? Am I just dissatisfied? Am I tired? Maybe I'm just getting old. I have plenty of years left in me, but not necessarily at the high intensity level of a neonatologist or an intensivist.

And then think about these myths that we talked about and the self-limiting beliefs. Try to make sure you're prepared to overcome those. Then start to identify your options. And the options you need to identify are just what's out there, and I've given you this list. But there's also a handout at nonclinicalphysicians.com/70jobs that you can get, that has a list of more than 70 individual jobs that are suited to most physicians. But explore and learn about what's out there. Don't be in a big hurry, start to take your time. And intentionally begin to consider what those jobs entail.

Then spend a little time thinking about your personality, interests, skill sets, and job factors. Maybe write these things down. And then maybe write down all the jobs you've learned about. And then line up those two. Line up your options and your personality, interest, skill sets, and job factors that align together with your interests and skill sets. And then if you can find one or two, then start to get to work on learning more about preparing a resume and other steps.

As far as the options go, I'm not going to spend a lot of time on that today. But like I say, there's things in pharma, in the hospital setting, medical writing, utilization management and benefits management and the health insurance companies, consulting. And maybe doing some kind of a med spa or DPC or some other version of clinical might still be an option, including telemedicine and locums, which sometimes has a lot more freedom. And then explore and look for that sweet spot where the skills, interests, personality, and the demand for that job all overlap.

So, if you're one that likes to work remotely and you have a lot of self-discipline, and let's say your personality is such that you like interacting with people, and you find out that you can do a remote writing job, but maybe instead of writing go into communications, which involves some direct face to face time with people.

Anyway, you're trying to combine these things and see what matches together with your interest skills and personality, as well as the demand. It's kind of like if you're an entrepreneur. You need to find something that you're passionate about, that you can make money with, and in which there's a demand for. Similarly, when you're looking for a job like this, you need to figure that out.

And in the meantime, to learn more, go to LinkedIn, go to Facebook, go to mentors, talk to colleagues from the past so you can get some firsthand information about each of the jobs. And ideally if you could shadow in some of these jobs, but most of these situations, they really won't allow you to do that like in a pharma company or an insurance company. Maybe in the hospital setting or in an academic setting, you could.

Join a professional association. If you can find one that's applicable to the areas that you're considering. Start to search job listings just as research. Not because you're getting ready to apply, but because you want to see the keywords and what's listed in there.

Create a LinkedIn profile and get help with that if you need to, but it should be a complete LinkedIn profile. Then write a resume, start writing your cover letters. Every one of those should be customized to the person that you're applying for a job with, or the company. Prepare for your interviews and expect that the first several interviews aren't going to be the greatest, just because it's a skill, that unless you've done some interviews recently, it'll take a while to get prepared for that again.

That's what I wanted to tell you about alternative careers and dispelling the myths and a quick overview of what you can look forward to if you're thinking of changing to an alternate or nonclinical or nontraditional career.

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The opinions expressed here are mine and my guest’s. While the information provided on the podcast is true and accurate to the best of my knowledge, there is no express or implied guarantee that using the methods discussed here will lead to success in your career, life, or business.

The information presented on this blog and related podcast is for entertainment and/or informational purposes only. I do not provide medical, legal, tax, or emotional advice. If you take action on the information provided on the blog or podcast, it is at your own risk. Always consult an attorney, accountant, career counselor, or other professional before making any major decisions about your career. 

The post How to Kill the Myths About Alternative Jobs for Clinicians – 252 appeared first on NonClinical Physicians.

In today's podcast, Dr. Abeyna Bubbers-Jones explains how she helps physicians (or medics) follow their career ambitions in new ways. 

Our Sponsor

We're proud to have the University of Tennessee Physician Executive MBA Program, offered by the Haslam College of Business, as the sponsor of this podcast.

The UT PEMBA is the longest-running, and most highly respected physician-only MBA in the country. It has over 700 graduates. And, the program only takes one year to complete. 

By joining the UT Physician Executive MBA, you will develop the business and management skills you need to find a career that you love. To find out more, contact Dr. Kate Atchley’s office at (865) 974-6526 or go to nonclinicalphysicians.com/physicianmba.

Medic Footprints

Dr. Bubbers-Jones and her friend chose the name of their company because they only serve doctors, and they were seeing the “footprints” of these unhappy doctors all over the world. 

The website has created a large collection of free articles, videos, and courses to help physicians overcome burnout and pursue new career options. Medical Footprints also provides a premium membership, with access to coaching and other premium services.

The site provides content to nurture, support, and educate doctors. The organization also works with companies to recruit doctors looking for nontraditional careers in several international locations. 

Dr. Bubbers-Jones Advice

The best investment you could ever make in yourself is to get a career coach. Finding a career coach is not always an easy thing… And it's basically just unlocking a key that you have inside of you, and just helping you to realize what you need to be doing moving forward.

Summary

At Medic Footprints you will be able to access plenty of free advice and instruction. While there, you should consider joining the site as a member, so that you can access even more actionable premium content designed to help you find your next job. It includes over 50 hours of webinar instruction in diverse career pathways, resumé writing, networking, coaching, and other tools.

NOTE: Look below for a transcript of today's episode.

EXCLUSIVE: Get a daily dose of inspiration, information, news, training opportunities, and amusing stories by CLICKING HERE.

Links for Today's Episode:

• Medic Footprints
• Top Reasons Why Coaching Is So Essential for Healthcare Leaders – 197
• NewScr!pt

Download This Episode:

Right Click Here and “Save As” to download this podcast episode to your computer.

Podcast Editing & Production Services are provided by Oscar Hamilton

Today's PNC Podcast Transcript

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Transcription PNC Podcast Episode 248

Are Career Ambitions Beyond Conventional Practice Within Reach? - Interview with Dr. Abeyna Bubbers-Jones

John: I'm really happy to have found my guest for today's episode. Her name is Abeyna Bubbers-Jones, and she was a national health service urology specialist trainee working in Blackburn in England. That was in 2014. And having graduated from medicine at the age of 22 at Nottingham, she worked for several years as a surgical trainee in the NHS, but she wanted to do something more. So, she moved to South Africa and worked as a trauma surgeon for nearly two years.

Revitalizing her love for medicine, realizing that a new challenge and experience had helped her to gain the real satisfaction that she needed to develop as a professional and an individual. She decided to return to the UK where she noticed that many doctors were experiencing similar issues she had faced. They were stressed and burned out, feeling doubtful about their careers with low self-worth and considering leaving the profession.

That led her to create Medic Footprints with her school friend, Sarah Saban. It was designed as a community and a network for doctors exploring alternative careers and support. So today we're going to get into it with Dr. Abeyna Bubbers-Jones. The title of today's episode is "Are Career Ambitions Beyond Conventional Practice Within Reach?"

Sometimes it's just amazing to me as long as I've been doing this podcast and working with physicians is that I can find a resource that's actually been out there for many years that I've never known about and I'm just blown away. That is specifically about today's guest because she helps physicians just like we do here at the NonClinical Physicians podcast. And I just want to say hello to Dr. Abeyna Bubbers-Jones. Welcome.

Dr. Abeyna Bubbers-Jones: Hey John, thank you so much for having me on the podcast. Yeah, I can't believe it. I think I've seen you about but I haven't reached out until now. So, there you go.

John: I guess part of it is I'm in the US, you're in the UK and you serve a huge audience I think over there where I'm kind of focused on the US. Although I've had recent guests from the UK and I have one coming up that I haven't interviewed yet from France. So, it's fun to reach outside the US borders.

Dr. Abeyna Bubbers-Jones: Great thing about meeting like-minded, I say, leaders in this area because we are leaders in this area, is that we are sharing a narrative, which is so, so similar across borders, across the world. And that's one of the things that I realized early on in my journey with Medica Footprints. But even though there are lots of similarities and narratives, the real power... I'm not sure that was the right word... power that you have is that you connect with your followers at a local level, which is always really important especially when you are the spokesperson for nonclinical careers in your region of the world. And that's why people follow you and that's how you grow. So yeah, we've done such an amazing job clearly.

John: And I think it's great for us here to hear about you because I have so many physicians that come to the US, foreign medical grads from all over the world. And for whatever reason, either they can't get a residency or they move around because of their spouse, whatever, and they can't get that typical clinical job they're looking for. And they have a license in another country or training in another country. So, I think you're going to just be such a benefit to those people that have been following my podcast for a long time. Why don't you tell us a little bit about your story? I think there was some burnout involved there or some disillusionment and it led to things. So, we definitely want to hear that.

Dr. Abeyna Bubbers-Jones: A lot of these stories start with burnout and disillusionment. It's like the typical rags to riches story for a doctor. It's hilarious when you say that actually, but yeah, you're right. But I don't think my story actually started out with burnout. Disillusionment, yes, definitely. I went into medicine. It was my first degree. So, obviously, in the US, you do medicine as a postgrad, whereas in the UK and other countries, we just go straight in. And so, we have to prepare ourselves from actually quite an early age. You don't know what you're really getting into. And you have kind of this dream vision of being a doctor, like the TV shows, which is not as sexy as it looks, I have to say.

And so, when I finally graduated and got into medicine, my first two years as a foundation house officer, it just wasn't the story that I signed up for. And as I described to other people, it was like being a glorified medical secretary. A lot of the work we did was mainly kind of writing and discharge summaries and writing. Yeah, you do clinical histories, but then someone else would come and do it again and again. So, a lot of repetition I found in healthcare.

You then start questioning "Is this going to be my life for the rest of my career as a doctor?" Then you see your seniors who are burned out themselves and saying, "I am retiring very shortly and I'm only 30" kind of thing.

And so, I was always looking for other opportunities as a doctor, beyond the conventional that was available to me, or even beyond healthcare, for example, because going into medicine, you have to demonstrate that you've got a lot of extracurricular activities behind your belts. So, you've got to demonstrate that you're a very kind of rounded person. You've got lots of skill sets. You're adaptable, you're talented, blah, blah, blah. And then you go into medicine and all of that is stripped out.

John: Right. That's true.

Dr. Abeyna Bubbers-Jones: I didn't actually want that bit. They just want you to follow the rules and the guidelines and everything else it's set up, which has its place, don't get me wrong. But as I always say, you are not fitting the person with the job. I'm an occupational health physician now, by the way, guys. So, this is why I talk like this. You're not fitting the person with the job, and this is why the problem of disillusion and burnout amongst medics is significantly high because that is a really poor fit for the job that they've been asked to do full stop. That was really a summary of my actual journey, but I'll tell you very briefly as a result of exploration of that question of "What else is there to do?" I ended up going to South Africa to work in trauma surgery for two years after my core surgical training. It was the best couple of years of my life professionally and actually as a person, because I worked in a different medical setting, lots of very, very different challenges, but rewarding in so many other ways.

I realized that the problem wasn't my choice of career pathway, it was just the work environment. About saying how I could address that, if at all, and also how do I actually choose a pathway that works for me because the pathway that is designed by the institutional system, particularly in the UK, the public health system is one that's designed specifically for workforce planning. But as we know, one size does not always fit all. And if you are looking to do something else, you've got to do it on your own volition, like most people in the real world.

John: Right.

Dr. Abeyna Bubbers-Jones: So, that was the beginning of the journey. And then realizing that my problem was a problem shared amongst all of my colleagues. And the starting footprints as a community for doctors exploring diverse and alternative career opportunities, providing them with a network, information, resources, opportunities, and really growing that. And then in the process of that, realizing that it wasn't just a UK problem, it was an international problem. And here we are.

John: Yes.

Dr. Abeyna Bubbers-Jones: That's the start of the journey.

John: I just want to highlight some of the things you said that we've talked about before here on the podcast,. that basically many physicians, if not all of them, choose to become a physician when they're a child. Even if you're 20 years old, your brain is not mature. So, there's no way you really know.

Dr. Abeyna Bubbers-Jones: I'd say younger, like age 12, 13. You can make the decision at that age.

John: Yes, absolutely. That's true. And sometimes it just doesn't fit the individual personality, the strengths, the weaknesses, the strong suits, whatever. So, it's more common. And I think the systems, unfortunately, whether the NHS or here or wherever it just doesn't seem to be flexible and it doesn't seem to be responding. Then people like us have to say, "Look, come on, there are other things you can do. Many of which are actually built on your medical background. And so, let's get going." I agree hundred percent. When you sort of started thinking about this, I know we're going to talk about Medic Footprints, but that probably was not your first response. What did you start doing that would help yourself and would help others? How did you start to make that transition?

Dr. Abeyna Bubbers-Jones: It was one morning I woke up and I was in Blackburn. And for those of you that don't know the UK, which I didn't know where Blackburn was when I got the job, to be honest. It's north of Manchester. Everyone knows where Manchester is. It's north of Manchester. It's not exactly a place where people would just generally go to, unless you're a doctor where you end up anywhere.

I woke up one morning, and I was like, "Hey, I'm a London girl." I was like, "What am I doing here?" Even though I really loved the job, I was doing urology. I realized I was far away from my family and I felt like I needed more control and autonomy because I was again applying for another job, which could be anywhere in the country. I did not want to live my life like that.

I really was making a very clear decision that I needed to do something outside of that, that wasn't relying on the public sector, to be a doctor. And then I spoke to my friend who's not a medic. And we were like, "Let's just do something. Let's just start a business. Let's just start a company." And that's how I was born. And initially, it was supposed to be for international recruitment, but we realized we didn't really enjoy calling Australia at 12:00 at midnight, and we didn't have time for that.

So, that's how it changed to, really just supporting doctors locally, because it is the local narratives that connect with doctors. And through that, I learned the really hard way, about running a business which as a doctor, I had no experience in whatsoever. Really highlighting as a doctor in the public sector where we don't talk about money. Money it's not a thing in the public sector that you actually talk about on a day-to-day basis unlike in the US. I know it's completely different.

And so just learning about business, finance, marketing, lead generation, and growing communities. Actually, turning that into a business model that's sustainable. None of that was in my vocabulary. And it actually took some time to really recognize who we are, who do we serve exactly, and how we're going to grow as a self-sustaining organization or company.

And I think that's actually really genuinely become more apparent having learned, having worked with both doctors and companies, particularly in the last few years, and especially with health technology growing as a new sector, providing a lot of opportunities for doctors, but really not having any real segue for doctors to get into it easily enough. And that's where the greatest need is I believe at the moment.

John: Okay. Well, certainly technology has helped us. It's been a challenge, of course, to learn all of it, but it's certainly allowing us to do things in a few days or weeks or months that 10 years ago you'd have to be able to program a computer and all that. So that has been kind of a two-edged sword. All right. Were there some certain resources you used to learn some of this business? Was it your associate? Was it just going online and reading and didn't go and get an MBA or anything like that?

Dr. Abeyna Bubbers-Jones: That's the joy of this. I know as doctors we tend to be high qualification junkies.

John: Right.

Dr. Abeyna Bubbers-Jones: I've got like a billion letters after my name already. And I think the business actually really worked for me because I decided I'm not going to go and get extra qualifications. MBA is the thing that a lot of my colleagues have done. But it does not replace the joys and challenges of running a business from scratch. And that's where all my learnings have been just by doing. Actually, I find that quite refreshing, just to learn at pace in real time. And I think MBA's are very good for networking from what I understand. But if you are running a business, it's quite difficult to do both in practice as well as being a practicing doctor at the same time.

John: Yeah.

Dr. Abeyna Bubbers-Jones: No, no, there wasn't anything specific. I might have done a few this here and there, but a lot of it was just talking to people, talking to other business owners, learning from experience, and trial and error. There is a lot of trial and error in business. And really kind of responding flexibly to market changes. What doctors want; what doctors don't want? What companies want, what companies don't want? And actually, designing services that fit into both sides as a marketplace essentially.

John: I think we'll see entrepreneurial physicians I've talked to and entrepreneurs in general. In fact, my wife actually runs a business. None of them have MBAs for the most part because they don't really teach you how to be an entrepreneur at the level we're talking about. Just starting bootstrapping something from the ground up. So, it sounds like a story that we've heard before, that we just get out there and do it. You learn so much from doing.

Now I want you to tell us about Medic Footprints. What does that name represent? Where did that come from? And then what did it look like when you started? And to me, when I look at the website now, which is medicfootprints.org, put that plug in and we'll do it again later. There's a lot going on there. So, tell us the story about the company.

Dr. Abeyna Bubbers-Jones: Yeah. As I indicated earlier, John, when we started Medic Footprints, me and my friend decided what name we're going to call our company. And because we were looking at international recruitment at the time, it just seems to fit Medic Footprints. And I'm really glad that we've stuck with that name actually because "footprints" being all over the world, it's quite flexible and can go anywhere. But Medic because we only serve doctors.

So, we're all about doctors. There have been so many times in the past where people have said, "Well, why don't you do nurses? Why don't you do X healthcare professional?" But the quality of what we do is grounded in that niche. And again, that narrative that doctors have, which is really unique to any other healthcare professional.

And that is the strength of why our brand is so strong amongst doctors and also why we work so well with companies because we know doctors, we are doctors. And I think when you start diluting that brand, it can really affect your business and your business model. We moved over from international recruitment because it just didn't work with our lifestyles, frankly. I didn't like the word recruitment because it kind of has a negative connotation to it.

John: Head hunter.

Dr. Abeyna Bubbers-Jones: Yeah. But we are connectors. We nurture doctors, we support them and we educate them. We inspire them, we provide opportunities. But we also work with companies, in the broader sense it's recruitment because everyone understands what that word is, but we do more in the way of employer branding work, headhunting, specialist consultancy if they're recruiting doctors on mass or even one. Because we find that a lot of companies just don't know what they're looking for in doctors actually, and they don't make the most of them.

That's how the company has changed over the last few years. So, it does look quite different. If you look at the website, we have built up a huge resource of information, which is for doctors, all free. Well, most of it's free. We've also got a premium membership as well. And that's so that they can get started on their own journey. Because a lot of this is off the beaten path, off the treadmill.

And I find that most doctors just are confused and need a bit of clarity as to what options are out there, permission to go and do it. Just those two things. An inspiration and the mindset you need to become successful and whatever success is to that individual. Success means different things for different people. Yeah, that's where we are now.

John: When you're looking at a website and you see some different categories, sometimes it's not a hundred percent apparent, but I see that you have basically written material there, articles, maybe you call a blog post or whatever, but just some interesting and helpful information. That way you have videos, you have courses that are free. You hold some events from time to time. What are those events like?

Dr. Abeyna Bubbers-Jones: Oh, the events. We actually started off with networking events in person, that was when most things were done in person. And then actually we navigated to online webinars way before the pandemic happened, I have to say. Way before that happened. And that enabled us to grow our reach. The webinars, they generally tend to be based on doctors sharing their story related to a specific topic or I say specialty very loosely. And one of our last events, for example, was an online conference. We do in-person conferences as well. We haven't done so for a few years because of the pandemic. But our last event was an in-person conference on the smaller medical specialties. So, we're not all about leaving medicine entirely. It's actually just widening, raising awareness for other opportunities for doctors, whatever that may be.

For example, I'm a practicing doctor. I work as an occupational health physician and when I changed from surgery to occupational health, I didn't know occupational health. I had not heard of it. I'm doing it now because I went looking, but there are like at least 30 plus probably more specialties that doctors aren't told about and actually would solve a lot of the problems that they face in the way of looking for something that's more flexible work-life balance. So that conference was really kind of filling that gap to educate and inform doctors and what else was out there, if they still wanted to keep their registration numbers and practice from a clinical and nonclinical capacity. But in other specialties, they are actually looking for more doctors. So, that was that.

And then we have been doing live webinars, twice a week. Again, interviewing some really influential doctors in Industry predominantly on their journey. Really focusing a bit of the "how", but also the mindset behind how they achieved what they achieved. And I think one thing that really binds them all is that they use the word courage, but they have the courage to say, "This is not for me." Against adversity, you have a lot of colleagues that are around you saying, "Are you crazy?"

I spoke to an ex-doctor today who told me that they left. They quit their job or they wanted to quit their job, but they didn't know how, because it wasn't really easy to quit their job in this particular hospital. And when they finally found out the route to quitting, they were then told to have a psychological assessment to make sure they were certain to actually leave that job. And then they said, "Oh, I'm going to go into the media." And they were like, "Really?" Like they're questioning it. And we shouldn't be treated like that, as human beings, you know what I mean? The psychological assessment because we decided against a job that actually is not fulfilling for some of us, it is not rewarding. It's the wrong job. I just got into the wrong job. I realize it is the wrong job. I don't want to be harming my patients because I hate my job. I am leaving and doing something that I know I could love. Like I don't need a psych assessment for that.

John: Yeah. Right. It should be the other way around. You need a psych assessment if you don't do that.

Dr. Abeyna Bubbers-Jones: Yeah. Exactly, exactly. They're doing the right thing. And I see that come back and say, "Hey, I've played the field so to speak. And I think medicine is for me for now." And then we'll leave again.

John: Right. Now I saw on the site too, that maybe these are paid services. And I want to distinguish that because I just want to understand it too. There are some coaching opportunities. I mean, to receive coaching, link up and there might be a service to help with your CV or resume, that kind of thing. These are practical things when you're starting to change your job. And then how is that different from let's say being a member? Like the membership.

Dr. Abeyna Bubbers-Jones: The membership, the real benefit of that is we've got a whole lot of resources behind a wall that you don't see. A lot of that is the video content that we record on webinars on various specialties. On practical tips, interviews with influencers, hundreds and hundreds, actually. So, what you see on the website is just the tip of the iceberg basically. The other benefit is that we get discounts off events with other partners. Quite a lot of the time at significant discounts. So, we offer that to our members as well. And all the members get one to one with me.

John: Oh, that's worth it right there.

Dr. Abeyna Bubbers-Jones: Exactly. If you do anything one-to-one with me, I have at least eight years, if not more, experience working with hundreds and thousands of doctors and companies. So, in half an hour, doctors usually go off with more clarity on their next steps, usually speaking with me. I am not officially a coach or anything like that, but I do have a wealth of expertise in that domain. That's non-biased at all. As I said, I'm still a doctor. I am not pro- or anti-anything, but I am pro-happier and healthier doctors. That's what I'm "pro."

John: Awesome. Again, there's so much there. It should really be checked out. So, go to medicfootprints.org listeners. One of the reasons we do the podcast is to give resources. If you don't check them out, you're not going to know whether they're going to help you. Any advice for my listeners, just in general? A lot of the listeners here are frustrated. They don't know what direction to go. You touched before on the mindset, that's a big part of it. And then there's just where to look and how to find these jobs. So, any kind of general advice for physicians who are kind of in that stage in their careers?

Dr. Abeyna Bubbers-Jones: Yeah. I would say the best investment you could ever make in yourself is to get a career coach. Finding a career coach is not always an easy thing and that's why we have, on our website at least, we've got a list of career coaches that we've approved who specifically work with doctors who are transitioning. A lot of them are based in the UK, but they serve people across the world. And I know some of the coaches are working with people in India and South Africa. It's timeless in that sense.

But as doctors, we pay a lot of money to go on courses and blah, blah, blah. But we don't really spend any money on ourselves as individuals, as human beings. And so, there's a huge return on investment in any time and money you spend on a career coach because they won't tell you what to do. They should not be telling you what to do. They will help you gain clarity in your next steps. And it's basically just unlocking a key that you have inside of you and just helping you to realize what you need to be doing moving forward. Whether that's a one-off, whether that's several, it's like therapy, but for specific people's careers.

That's the number one advice that I would give. I say that to pretty much everyone that I speak to because personally it's really rewarding for me and for the business enabling me to support other doctors better. I really make an impact. So yeah, that's number one. If you're confused, get a career coach, a hundred percent.

John: Yeah. And I remind my listeners that when I was a chief medical officer, and this is true almost of any major corporation, all the leaders get coaching. I had a friend who when he changed jobs, nonclinical jobs from hospital to hospital or organization to organization, one of the things in his contract was you're going to provide me with a business or professional coach. So, they're definitely worth their weight in gold. And if you get someone else to pay for it all the better. But it's excellent advice. There's so much we could go into here. But I just wanted to get this 30-minute snapshot of what's going on in the UK with Medic Footprints and the fact that there's this whole enterprise over there. I really thank you for coming on today and talking to us about this.

Dr. Abeyna Bubbers-Jones: Thank you so much, John, for your time. And my final question is will you feature on our podcast?

John: Oh, I'd be happy to. Absolutely.

Dr. Abeyna Bubbers-Jones: Thank you so much. We're really looking forward to it. Let's continue the conversation.

John: Yeah, we should. And the other thing is to have you back here because there are so many things you're doing. I would be more than pleased to have you come back and talk about just one specific new project or goal or course or event you're doing. So, we'll have you back for sure.

Dr. Abeyna Bubbers-Jones: I'd love to do that. I'd love to do that. Thank you.

John: You are welcome. So, with that, I will say goodbye and thanks again for being here.

Dr. Abeyna Bubbers-Jones: And thank you, John. It was such a pleasure. And yeah, looking forward to doing more.

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