I'm getting older and came to the realization that I would not be able to pay for my kids' tuitions if they were to get into one of those expensive elite schools if I stayed in academia. No I do not intend to push them in such a direction but I want to be able to keep the option open for them. My father came to the U.S. with nothing other than his health, his education, and some broken English and was able to attain an upper-middle class status and insisted he pay for my college despite that I told him I'd do it on my own.
I feel that for me not to continue something my dad did for me would be selfish and not living up to what I believe a parent with the means to do so should do for his own children.
I will say the place I am at does have it's merits. I'm not trying to say that because the cog that is me that didn't fit should be taken as a statement that the department is bad. There are some truly excellent psychiatrists there and for that reason my decision to leave did cause me a lot of internal emotional conflict.
While money is the main factor there were some problems I was having with the job but these were issues where it's not really fair to mention them on this forum.
Private practice pays a lot more and I was asked by literally the top practice in the city to join them. The open offer was temporary. If I didn't take it up I could've lost it. It is made up of all academic and former academic doctors with impressive credentials all doing good practice. My overhead to the practice is only my rent, my secretary's salary, the billing, and keeping up the computer server. The guy who heads the practice has it set up so that all the doctors there h own their own practices and we only share secretaries such as one covering the other if a secretary leaves the job for another or attendings covering the other during weekend call.
Many practices ask for 30-40% overhead but this one is only the expenses above that I am confident will lead to less than 20%.
Had I stayed in Cincinnati I likely wouldn't have left academia or would've taken up a job as the forensic director in the local state hospital that was the #2 position in the hospital and would've led to a path to be the #1 doc there years down the road. It was not my choice to move out of there. I did it to support my wife who got a professor's position in St. Louis. I still have a lot of respect for that department that is made up of docs like Paul Keck, Micheal Keys, Susan Mcelroy, and Doug Mossman, all ranked top 100 doctors in the country. Wow, 4 of them all in the same place.
If anything I figure leaving the university might have me on the board more cause the time I left for months was when I joined U of Cincinnati and my itch to teach was being scratched there. With no teaching exposure in private practice the itch will get worse.
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Leaving academia for private practice
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