Merit Badges and Early Retirement

Administrative bureaucracy has a tendency to crush the spirit of those working on the front lines. This article serves as a lament from one physician on the notion of merit badges, and mandated recertifications.

Why This Physician Isn’t Burned Out

I am an emergency physician.

I provide care to abusive patients via a clunky EMR. I work nights, weekends and holidays. Because of unnecessary bureaucratic tasks, simple aspects of my job are cumbersome and take longer than they should. 

And I am not burned out…

How To Explore A New Job Market As An Emergency Physician

Working as an attending means a greater degree of responsibility than working as a resident. You are more likely to have hospital or system-level roles, be involved with committees or champion hospital initiatives.   Having a sense of the job market gives insight into the context of your job interest and enables you make the best possible decision when pursuing a job.

For the purposes of this post, I’ll presume you know nothing about an area—you’re moving to a new location and would like to size up a job market that is completely foreign to you. Any information you have by word-of-mouth will only help solidify what you gather by using the approach below.

What Emergency Medicine Physicians Want From Recruiters

It’s time to get over the antagonistic relationship a lot of doctors have with recruiters and get to a point where we can help each other.

Ultimately, it can only benefit us both to have higher quality interactions…

Dealing with Bad Patient Outcomes

Working in a high-liability specialty for the past nine years, I have received the news of bad outcomes several times. It never gets easier—and frankly I think that if it does, it’s a good sign that I should probably quit clinical medicine.
Below is the process I go through and a few tips I wish I knew earlier on…

Working as a Team with Your Hospital’s Emergency Physicians

Good interpersonal relationships among physicians are critical in fostering excellent patient care. With ever-expanding mandates, both governmental and administrative, along with the changing landscape of medicine, physician-physician relations are often strained. These and other systemic factors contribute to physician angst and can lead to disruptive behavior and relationships. Tempers flare and conflicts develop over perceptions about another doctor’s ability, motivation, and decisions.

Tales from the Trenches – A Late Night in the ED

Tonight began like any other night. I sleepily entered the back door near the trauma bay and was greeted by a man sprinting down the hallway wearing one shoe, tighty-whities, and sporting handcuffs attached to one wrist.

5 Mistakes I Made Accepting an Attending Contract

The final year of any residency is a time of accelerated independence, moonlighting, and an intense search for that first job as an attending. This decision is critical as one embarks on a life-long career in medicine, and it will […]

Why I Chose Emergency Medicine

There is a definite finality to the decision of which specialty a physician pursues. The reasons are as vast as they are individual. Hopefully, the med student has done due diligence and has a solid grasp on what their future […]

Quieting the Chaos – Finding Contentment in Rural Emergency Medicine

The frenetic pace and chaos of working in an urban trauma center are addicting – at least for a while. Interesting, unusual, and tragic patients test the mettle of even seasoned physicians. For some, the lure is too strong to […]