International Medical Corps Jobs

Emergency response volunteers, internships and fellowships from International Medial Corps.

The International Medical Corps has a number of nonclinical physician jobs listed on the Freelance MD jobs site.

Listings include:

• Emergency response volunteers
• International Emergency Medicine Internships
• Harbor-UCLA / IMC Emergency Medicine Fellowship in Global Health
• Volunteers to help with the IMC website
• Emergency Medicine Specialist, Afghanistan
• Emergency Medicine Specialist, Haiti

You can see all of the listings and learn more here: http://jobs.FreelanceMD.com

Join Medecins Sans Frontieres?

Want to have an exciting new job with Medecins Sans Frontieres?

We've just had a new opportunity posted on our non-clincal physician jobs site that's worth a post here as well.

Here's part of the emal we received:

I'm taking this opportunity to forward you an email from our friend and colleague Sebastian Spencer.  Sebastian is an emergency physician working for Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in Brussels, and he is looking for a replacement for himself in a fabulous position with MSF.

Below is a description of this job opportunity for an emergency physician with interest and / or experience working in the field of international emergency medicine to work for MSF as their Emergency Care Advisor in Brussels, Belgium.  The job involves at least 4 months of international placement / field work outside of Brussels with MSF, and administrative/development work in Brussels.  There is also an opportunity to work separately but concurrently for nearby hospitals in Belgium, Germany, France, Netherlands or the UK (as several in that office already do).

Please feel free to contact Dr Spencer about this truly exciting opportunity for emergency physicians, IEM fellows and others interested in IEM, and please distribute this to your elists of interested EM and IEM physicians.

Here's more about the opportunity. You can find the listing and how to apply here at http://jobs.freelancemd.com, our physician job board.

Click to read more ...

First Nonclincal Physician Jobs Posted

Physician Advisor Houston: Accretive Health has posted the first nonclinical job to our new nonclinincal jobs board!

If you're looking for physicians to fill a nonclinical job, please post it. It's free (for now), which is a terriffic price.

Our goal is to add not only nonclinical jobs, but volunteer, temporary and unusual jobs for docs.

Click to read more ...

Informed Consent: The U.S. Medical Education System Explained

If you are considering a career in medicine or currently in training, you need to read this book.

Not long ago I posted a short blog entry about Dr. Benjamin Brown and his controversial analysis of physician income.  At the time, Dr. Brown's blog had around 200 comments.  As of today, over 320 comments have been posted and more seem to come by the hour.

Why the incredible interest in this topic?

Well, for one, we're in a recession and the general public still considers physicians "rich."  For someone to have the nerve to insinuate that not all physicians are wealthy and some are actually underpaid is to cut across the grain of conventional thinking at a time when thinking conventionally is very popular.

The other reason is that I have never seen an analysis of physician income like the one Dr. Brown posted on his site.  It is well done and interesting, and physicians should take the time to read through his material.

Based on the comments, it appears that many physicians are reading this information which tells me that no one else has seen an analysis like the one Dr. Brown has produced.  Unfortunately, something as important as a basic analysis of the financial implications of a career in medicine is not coming from our academic medical establishment, but from a surgery resident who compiled the data in his spare time.  

Go figure.

Well, the good news is that Dr. Brown's book, Informed Consent: The U.S. Medical Education System Explained is now available.  If you're interested, you can check out the book's website and either download a copy to your Kindle or iPad, or order the paperback.

I downloaded a copy for the Kindle ap on my iPad, and have really been enjoying it.  While much of the book is tailored for a young person considering a career in medicine, even physicians out of training will enjoy reading the sections on physician income and the high costs of medical education.

Dr. Benjamin Brown, author of Informed ConsentI recommend this book to any young person considering a healthcare career, any medical student or resident, and any physician who is out in practice and having a difficult time explaining to friends and relatives the true financial implications of being a physician.  

Many thanks to Dr. Brown for his timely piece.  We at Freelance MD wish him continued success in his medical education. 

Physician Income And The Curious Case Of Dr. Benjamin Brown

Physician income analyzed.

I stumbled upon a very interesting blog post the other day.  It's entitled, The Deceptive Income of Physicians, and was written by Dr. Benjamin Brown, a plastic surgery resident who is also the author of the upcoming book, Informed Consent: The US Medical Education System Explained.  Here's how it begins:

Physicians spend about 40,000 hours training and over $300,000 on their education, yet the amount of money they earn per hour is only a few dollars more than a high school teacher.  Physicians spend over a decade of potential earning, saving and investing time training and taking on more debt, debt that isn’t tax deductible.  When they finish training and finally have an income – they are taxed heavily and must repay their debt with what remains.   The cost of tuition, the length of training and the U.S. tax code places physicians into a deceptive financial situation.

The post is an interesting read and has generated a lot of discussion.  As of today, there have been 203 comments.

What I find most "curious" about this post-- aside from the passionate comments-- is the fact that I have never seen physician incomes analyzed like this before.  It is an unfortunate fact that most medical students remain completely naive to the financial implications of their choice of profession, and their potential specialty choices.

I wrote a recent blog post about this very issue where I quoted Dr. Robert Doroghazi, author of the book, The Physician's Guide to Investing: A Practical Guide to Building Wealth , as saying: 

"I believe the position of the academic medical establishment to deny medical students financial instruction is naive, hypocritical, and indefensible.  They should acknowledge that money is important.  It is never as important as your patient.  It is never as important as your family, your health, your freedom, or your integrity.  But is is important."

I couldn't agree more.

The medical establishment in this country should be ashamed of themselves.  Instead of having very frank and necessary discussions with medical students about the financial implications of becoming a physician, our medical leaders turn a blind eye to this very real need, and medical students are cast out into a harsh economic world with little financial knowledge to protect themselves and their families from potential financial ruin.

It is really an embarrassment to the medical community that this information isn't coming from the academic medical establishment, but a surgery resident who did the work in his spare time.

Thanks to Dr. Brown for making this information available to all of us.  I look forward to reading his upcoming  book.

Nonclinical Jobs For Doctors?

Not sure if a cashier is what most doctors are thinking when they're looking for nonclinical physician careers and opportunities.

(via A Cartoon Guide to Becoming a Doctor)

Social Media For Non-Clinical Physician Jobs?

I wonder if social media is used by a greater percentage of physicians who are looking for non-traditional or non-clinical jobs than their clinical counterparts?

AMN Healthcare’s "2010 Social Media Survey of Healthcare Professionals," which was released December 14, shows findings suggesting that traditional recruitment methods such as referrals, online job boards and search engines are still more preferred by job seekers than social media; however, social media is now more preferred than methods such as newspaper ads, career fairs and other methods. Additional findings from the survey include:

• Thirty-eight percent of clinicians surveyed are currently seeking employment, and 12 percent of current job seekers have been looking for more than a year.
• Nurses have had a significantly shorter job search than their fellow professionals, averaging three months, compared to just less than seven months for physicians and allied professionals, and nine months for pharmacists.
• Thirty-seven percent of clinicians reported using social media for professional networking; nurses had the highest use among healthcare workers at 41 percent.
• Ten percent of healthcare professionals are using mobile job alerts, but only 3 percent have received an interview, 2 percent have received a job offer and 1 percent secured a new job.
• Physicians are by far the heaviest users of mobile devices for professional reasons among their medical colleagues; 37 percent used healthcare-related applications and 17 percent used mobile devices for healthcare-related content or jobs.
• Sixty-four percent of the clinicians surveyed would choose Facebook, the clear favorite, if they could choose only one social networking site.

To be honest, the survey's decision to categorize online physician job boards — like our own at http://jobs.FreelanceMD.com — as 'traditional' seems inaccurate. I would categorize Freelance MD, and our job boards as 'social media' since it depends upon online interaction between individuals to a great extent.