Finding Your Lifesytle Niche As An MD

ZDoggMD (AKA Zubin Damania MD) is a hospitalist who's kickin'it his own way.

ZDogg's interview with TechCrunch TV discussing finding your niche and being happy as a physician.

ZDogg is a genuine doctor who uses YouTube as a creativity outlet to teach people about things like safe sex, delivering bad news, stayin’ healthy on vacation and hemorrhoids. When Hsieh asked how the world of being a doctor was going for him, ZDogg answered that he loved it but was frustrated with the fact that he couldn’t be himself. He told Tony that he’d love an outlet to share the raps he composes with a wider audience, hopefully to give people a good laugh but also to teach them a medical thing or two. Tony, being the zen like guy that he is, responded, “Why don’t you do it then?”. And so he did. The results are in the links above.

Leading An Organic Life

With the rise of genetically modified food, chemical exposures and hormonal overload, it is becoming increasingly more and more difficult to lead an all-natural, organic life.

I am an Organic Medicine physician having the privilege to help my patients get off their medicines and clean up their lives. This is not always an easy process, but it is always rewarding.

Let's face it, we live at a time when there are more chemicals and hormones in our environment than we, as humans, have ever been been exposed to. Many chronic medical problems from cancer to weight gain to chronic fatigue are the result of these influences on ourselves.

Whether we like it (or even believe in it), the environment we interact with has a direct effect on how we feel and how we age.

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The Medical Fusion Conference

Discover all of the options available to you as a physician.

The Medical Fusion Conference is a unique event that allows clinical physicians the opportunity to learn about unique niches where they can apply their clinical knowledge.  Learn more about the Medical Fusion Conference in the following video:

Medical Fusion isn't just another conference where you're sitting around and listening to an endless parade of speakers that lecture from behind a podium. Instead, you'll have every opportunity to talk to any speaker you're interested in learning more from. Our Accelerator Sessions are a perfect chance to make connections and deep-dive into the areas that are of interest to you.

You can view more videos on our Freelance MD YouTube Channel

More about our Accelerator Sessions

What are physicians saying about attending Medical Fusion?

“[The Medical Fusion Conference] was fun, professionally run, and highly stimulating.”

Dr. Mark Kroll, former Chief Technology Officer of St. Jude Medical

“My son thought being a doctor might get boring. I brought him to the Medical Fusion Conference and he saw whole worlds of medicine that he never dreamed existed. Now he can’t wait to go to medical school.”

Kenneth Kamler, MD, VP of The Explorers Club and author of Surviving the Extremes

“The Medical Fusion event is a unique forum to learn from and network with like-minded medical entrepreneurs. Our organization connected with other attendees from the 2010 event and we are well along the path collaborating on joint initiatives.”

Jeffrey Segal, MD, JD, Founder & CEO of Medical Justice Services

“The Medical Fusion Conference is a great way to meet other physicians considering non-clinical transitions or learn more about how to supplement your income. If you’re stuck in a rut, I’d recommend it.”

Arlen D. Meyers, MD, MBA, President and CMO of Medvoy.com, CEO, Society of Physician Entrepreneurs

"The Medical Fusion Conference is a unique event that brings together entrepreneurial physicians, business people, and investors to explore the intersection between business opportunity and clinical medicine."

Bruce Robertson, PhD, Managing Director, H.I.G. BioVentures

“Medical Fusion is setting a standard for physicians seeking alternative non-clinical careers that go beyond medical directorships or pharma jobs. [The Medical Fusion Conference] will continue to provide excellent insights into career options for physicians who no longer want to be only clinicians.”

Dr. Philippa Kennealy, Founder/CEO, The Entrepreneurial MD

“If you are interested in meeting like minded physicians, who are empowering themselves, and doing some AMAZING things in their practice and outside of medicine, you’ve got to attend [the Medical Fusion Conference].  The first conference was not only great for networking, it also inspired me to meet other doctors who “get it.”

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming, internet entrepreneur and founder of IncomeMD.com

The Art of Flight...Amazing

You've got to check this out...

Below is the trailer for the new snowboard documentary produced by Red Bull, The Art of Flight.  If the movie is anywhere near as good as the trailer, I'll be reduced to a pile of twitching, hyper-kinetic nerve endings by the end of it.  I had such an adrenalin rush after watching the trailer the first time that I had to fight the impulse to fling myself off the roof of my house-- it's just that good... 

The great thing is that the movie has finally been released and is available for download on iTunes.  I've already ordered it, so I'll let you know what I think once I watch it.

In the meantime, feast your eyes on the video below and try to fight the urge to quit your job and become a professional BASE jumper.

I know it's difficult...

Medicine & Motherhood

By Dr. Dawn Barker

Until recently, it was easy to reply when an inquisitive acquaintance asked, “What do you do?” I would answer that I was a child and adolescent psychiatrist. Easy.

The most difficult part was trying to explain that yes, a psychiatrist is a medical doctor, and no, I’m not a psychologist and there is a difference. But when faced with the same question these days, I struggle to answer. Of course, I am still a psychiatrist, and those certificates on my office wall are still valid. But my role now is so much broader and difficult to define.

Almost two years ago, I stopped work to have my first child, with a plan to take a year’s maternity leave. I was surprised when many of my friends and colleagues were shocked that I was taking so much time off. I replied with my standard child psychiatry spiel about the first year of an infant’s life being critical for secure attachment development, but the reality was that I wanted to stay at home with my new baby. I looked forward to having a year when I didn’t have to deal with acutely distressed patients, and the equally distressed hospital system. If I was going to be woken at night, I wanted to deal with my own child’s need rather than someone else’s. In fact, I wasn’t sure that a year would be long enough.

Before that first year was up, I was pregnant again, and I officially resigned from my position at work. I have recently had my second child, and now haven’t worked in medicine for almost two years. I always thought that society frowned upon women who went back to work when their children were young; instead, it seems that the opposite is true, and professional women are somehow expected to return to work quickly and hand over the raising of their children to someone else.

So what do I do now? I have been writing: I’ve written a novel and won a publisher’s manuscript development competition; I’ve kept a blog of my parenting experiences; I’ve written a few articles for magazines. Would I call myself a writer? I still can’t help but feel embarrassed to say that. It doesn’t seem like a ‘real’ job. I’m not earning a living from it, so I can’t really say it’s what I ‘do’.

Do I say that I’m a mother, or a housewife? In reality, that is what I do every hour of the day: I look after my family physically and emotionally, and I run a household. But I hesitate to define myself as a homemaker. I want people to know that I can do more than that, even though I know that raising children is difficult and tiring and incredibly important – but it is undervalued in our society. There seems to be more value placed on professional women returning to the workforce and employing someone else to look after their children.

There are days when I wish I was at work, having a coffee with other adults while we discuss a challenging clinical case, or reading a magazine while I eat lunch without a toddler trying to escape from a high chair next to me. Then I remember – that rarely happened when I was working. I was just too busy. It’s then that I remind myself: even the worst day at home with two young children is nowhere near as bad as the worst day at work.

Doctors should be the most supportive of professions when it comes to our colleagues becoming parents. We work every day with patients in difficulty and know the importance of a strong family, and yet our profession is one that makes it very difficult to balance both a working and parental role. Part time work is difficult to manage, clinical meetings and ward rounds are often held very early or after hours, and the on call work can be brutal. But we are more than doctors; we are mums and dads and wives and husbands, and we shouldn’t have to pick one or the other. We can’t do it all, and maybe we should stop trying to.

So when people ask me what I do now, I tell them that I am a psychiatrist who has taken a few years off to raise my family, and I also write on the side. And that’s an identity that I am happy with.

About: Dawn Barker is a Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist, writer and mother, based in Perth, Western Australia. She blogs at psychiatristparent.wordpress.com

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After Clinical Medicine, What’s The Next Chapter Of Your Life?

Professional coaching could be “just what the doctor ordered” for those seeking help in finding and following their call.  

A growing number of physicians are disenchanted with their clinical practice but may have difficulty pursuing a new calling.  The resulting dilemma creates an opening for a coaching relationship.  A professional coach—such as Freelance MD author, Ashley Wendell —could be the right “prescription” for physicians in transition.          

Deep within every heart is a longing for meaning, a quest for purpose.  But for most of us, the search for meaning is a journey.  And physicians are no exception.  They will need a plan for the journey, a roadmap for success.  When they get to a “fork in the road,” they may need help in deciding which way to go.  They may encounter dangers and detours along the way and need guidance to be able to slow down and avoid disaster.  And, they will need a friend for the journey.

1.  Callings: In Search of a Real Life

Calls may come in many disguises.  They may be calls to do something or calls to be something.  They may be calls toward something or calls away from something.  They may be calls to change something.  Or they may be calls toward whatever we’ve dared ourselves to do for as long as we can remember.

Coaches can help their physician clients explore the psychological, spiritual, and practical processes they encounter in listening and responding to their callings.  While honoring a calling’s essential mystery, coaches may also help their physician clients explore the questions that bloom naturally in the presence of a calling:  What does it ask of us?  How do we learn to separate our calls from the background noise in our lives?  How do we tell the true call from the siren call—an enticing appeal for something alluring but potentially dangerous.  How do we handle our resistance to it?

The challenge in coaching is to help us know whether our calls are true or false, to know how and when to respond to them, and to know whether a call really belongs to us or not.  This requires the coach to help their clients tread a path between two essential questions: “what is right for me?” and “where am I willing to be led?”

2.  Finding Your Call    

Coaching can help physicians “find their path” by exploring what their life and talents are calling them to “do.” Coaches can facilitate this process by helping their clients clarify their values, beliefs, and purpose. 

Perhaps the biggest challenge in helping physicians find their path is to get them to slow down or stop long enough to “take the call.”  We belong to a work-obsessesed culture whose busyness-as–usual makes us forget when to “knock-off,” or stop doing something.    

Coaching can also help cultivate the key social roles and relationships of their clients.  This can help them define how they will schedule their time in to specific roles and activities that represent what their passion and purpose are all about.  Similarly, it can be used to help them define what roles and activities in their current schedule need to be reduced or eliminated if they are going to live with authenticity.

The next step is to help their clients learn to stop looking for answers.  Instead, they should concentrate on asking questions.  Asking questions seems to engage us in a way that makes hearing our inner guidance more possible.  Nothing shapes our lives so much as the questions we ask.

3.  Turning Resistance Into Response

We all have a part of us that fears change and reacts to it with a reflexive flinch, the way snails recoil at the touch.  A calling, however, is a messenger of change, and by ignoring it, we risk the corrosive effects of avoidance and tempt wake up calls.  Responding to a call means doing something about it.  A calling requires action, decision-making, and change.

Resistance may actually be a good sign.  It could mean we are close to something vital and the calling is worthy of us.  The degree of resistance is usually equal to the amount of power waiting to be unleashed.  Coaches can provide the “push,” much like an eagle in teaching its young to soar.

If the calling we seek becomes the treasures, the obstacles to their path become the tests of commitment.  We must be willing to be “shaken up.”  Stress often prompts breakthroughs, crises point toward opportunities.  A call “rocks the boat” because it often points to our passions.

Generally, people won’t pursue their callings until the pain of doing so is exceeded by the pain of not doing so.  The main reason we ignore calls is that we know they will cost us something.  To be authentic, we may have to give up something dear—a job, a house, a relationship, a belief, and a lifestyle to which we’ve become accustomed. 

It is one thing to ask ourselves the question, “What do I want?”  It is another to ask ourselves—and to answer honestly: “What am I willing to give up or do to make this happen?”  This is sacrifice—the “letting go” of something we feel is “holy” in our lives.  It means stepping out of our “at home feeling” and leaving the familiar surroundings of our “birdcage.”  Every sacrifice, every step toward action, every response to a call necessitates a “leap of faith” and is done without knowing the outcome. 

Coaching can help us look at how we resist our callings, and what the challenges and blessings are from moving from “No” to “Yes.” Do we experience complete freedom to step out and make the most of our abilities?  Or are we hindered, like many people, by our own doubts or your capabilities to fulfill our potential? 

Coaching may help us discover how to overcome our trials, setbacks, and self-doubt as we press toward the reality of experiencing you dreams.  The focus can be shifted from “Why is this happening to me?” to “What is the teaching here?” and “What can I learn from this?”

4.  Following Your Calling

Much like college students who struggle to declare a major, students in the “school of life” often struggle to know and follow their passions.  They exert great effort to negotiate the tight passages of career choice or career transition and to create a match between who they are and what they do—the best kind of success.  These decisions need to be made from the heart more than the head.  What’s at stake is a life of integrity, a life that honors passion and purpose. 

Some may need all the help they can get in following their calls.  Coaches can serve not only as their guide but also their friend. 

Coaches can help their clients identify the emerging development tasks in your vision of the future, formulated as a “plan” for the next chapter of your lives.  Coaches can also help their clients create a vital learning agenda, and make learning a major part of the next chapter of their lives.  With this tool, they can learn when and how to take advantage of change in their lives by “holding on” to their values, “letting go” of bad habits, “taking on” new knowledge and skills, and “moving on” with their plan for the next chapter of their lives.

A growing number of physicians are looking for a practical guide to discovering their calling.  They need help in nurturing the process of listening and following their calling, for creating meaning in their life and work.  Professional coaching can provide the guidance they need to ensure a successful journey.

Managing The Transition From Clinical Practice To A Non-Clinical Career

Physicians seeking non-clinical careers will need to fine tune important life skills. 

A growing number of physicians are pursuing non-clinical careers. Some have discovered they can no longer sustain their purpose and passion through a clinical practice. Others feel trapped in their roles in traditional medicine—and want out.  

The good news is there is an alternative to staying trapped in your clinical practice. It involves “rewiring” yourself—rerouting the personal energy spent in your clinical work into deeply satisfying, work activities.  These personally customized work activities can transform your next chapter into the most fulfilling time of your life. But then, physicians who choose to rewire will need to fine tune a number of important life skills.  

Life skills for sustaining your purpose and passion in the phases of renewal: 

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