Yesterday we celebrated the graduation of the third year residents where I teach occasionally. Some recommendations for their years ahead:
1. Stay in close contact with you colleagues, talk to your colleagues, don't keep to yourself, exchange thoughts and experiences. Maybe even get together from time to time and present each other new research results or interesting articles.
2. Assemble a group of specialists that are easy to talk to, whom you can call at any time and just get an opinion, or a curbside consult, and who do not mind teaching you a trick or two. Don't go for the "just send me your patient" specialists.
3. Consider AudioDigest for your CME, they have excellent recorded talks that help you in every day practice.
4. Use new technology and new procedures wisely. Don't be the first to adopt them and not the last one. Be critical, consider the value for the patient and balance it against the cost to society
5. Find a financial consultant that is "fee-only". Don't fall for the insurance salespeople masquerading as financial advisers. You want impartial advice, not sales chatter. Create a 5 or 10 year financial plan and stick to it.
6. Buy a house. We are in a buyers market, it is a good time to buy. I always heard from my parents "we wish we had bought the house back then". Real estate always appears to be high at the present time, but in 10 years you will be happy to have bought it for the present price. Use Zillow to get crucial information and to research comparable homes. You can even buy and sell your home on Zillow.
7. If you need a new job, send a letter to every physician in your target area (direct mail). This is even better than networking. This way you will find three times more jobs and better jobs than the best recruiter will ever find.
8. Plan to go into your own practice. It is more fun, more good responsibility and good stress, you learn a tremendous amount, it is a life experience that you cannot miss (see this blog). Physicians are independent and are not meant to be herded into big corporations. The Walmartisation of medicine is overvalued.
9. Defend your patients, but also defend your profession. Speak out against more pay cuts, especially if they hide behind such funny names as "pay for performance".
Be especially sceptical of the so called "physician shortage". I will not believe this speculation until I see my income going up significantly. The price of any good or service is determined by supply and demand. We are still loosing income, so there is no shortage! Speak out against opening new medical schools and new residency programs. We do not need more physicians, but we may need more nurses, physician assistants, nurse practitioners and midwives.
I wish you all the best and a very bright future!
3 comments:
You can also try HomeGain for valuable homeseller information.
HomeGain also has a free instant homevaluation tool -HomeGain pioneered the concept back in 1999!
HomeGain recently brought its free homevaluation estimation tool back.
You can try it here
http://www.homegain.com
HomeGain's Homesale maximizer is also a cool tool
http://www.homegain.com/real_estate/index?ht=hp_rnav_tools
Sage advice. Plus, I agree with your Iphone comment. The service contracts are prohibitive, and NEVER advertised.
In answer to the anonymous post, which is obviously an advertisement for "Home Gain": I prefer Zillow since it went far above and beyond home gain. Home Gain offered a pricing estimate for you home. Zillow offers the whole package. I could not be more complete: you can see all public information about a home including square footage, which realtors just love to forget or to replace with vague, subjective terms such as "charming" - a euphemism for "too small". Zillow shows the map, the photo and, most importantly, a graph with the development of the value over the last years, the previous sales dates and prices, and very, very important, it gives you a list of comparables, until now a well guarded secret of realtors.
In summary, Zillow is a tool that drastically reduces the need for a realtor. I have no particular sympathies for an occupation for which you can be certified in a single weekend, just to go on to provide deep advice such as "the kitchen is nicely renovated" or "look at the gorgeous view". I assume realtors will go the way of the travel agent...I would not miss them. After all, they attach a 6% price increase to every transaction.
Zillow is a revolutionary new tool that gives much needed additional knowledge and power to homeowners and buyers. You can even advertise and sell or buy your home on Zillow.
I am thrilled!
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