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We were unable to process your request. Please try again later. If you continue to have this issue please contact customerservice@slackinc.com. Back to Healio Key takeaways: There are a variety of job opportunities for physicians outside of full-time clinical medicine. Naomi Lawrence-Reid, MD, teaches physicians how to find these opportunities and build a lucrative career. Growing up, Naomi Lawrence-Reid, MD, always knew she wanted to be a doctor. Her career as a physician looks different from what she pictured as a medical student, but she said she wouldn\u2019t have it any other way.
After medical school, Lawrence-Reid completed a pediatrics residency and then began working in a pediatric emergency medicine department. \u201cI got excellent experience,\u201d Lawrence-Reid told Healio. \u201cYou learn to work fast, to work hard, to make decisions quickly about whether a child is sick or not or needs a procedure or intervention. But after about 3 years, I knew that was not my forever career path.\u201d Lawrence-Reid knew she needed a change, so she left her full-time job and began looking for new ways to use her medical degree, from per diem work to expert witness testimony to medical writing. Today, Lawrence-Reid runs a company, Doctoring Differently, that teaches physicians how to transition from full-time clinical medicine to a career that better suits their lifestyle and goals. Her curriculum addresses all the important parts of a job that physicians rarely learn about: buying health insurance, malpractice coverage, retirement savings, and networking. Healio spoke with Lawrence-Reid about her journey and how physicians can begin to build a career that deviates from the typical path. Healio: Why did you decide to leave clinical medicine? Was it one specific issue or a culmination of multiple issues that led you to resign? Lawrence-Reid: Like with any breakup or big decision to step away, it\u2019s almost never one thing, right? There are always smaller things, and then the last thing where you decide you can\u2019t ignore the signs anymore and want to leave. First and foremost, pediatricians are at the bottom of the physician pay scale. My starting salary was $125,000 as a full-time attending physician, and I had almost $200,000 in educational debt living in a high-cost-of-living city. In addition to that, I was working in a tertiary academic center where you\u2019re told when you\u2019re working, when you\u2019re not working, when your vacations are. There was no autonomy. I saw no potential for advancement in this department. Then I had this shift in November of 2016 when I walked into the small office that they designated for doctors to do their charting \u2014 two desks, two chairs, two computers, a tiny little closet. One of the armrests on the chair was broken off, and there were shards of metal sticking up. There was a Post-It note on the computer that said, \u201cAdministration is aware, we\u2019re working on a fix.\u201d So, I do my notes with my arm tucked against my torso, I see my patients, write my notes, and go home. At my next shift, I expected to see a new office chair, but instead, administration had wrapped diapers around the shards of metal on the chair. I stood there for maybe 10 to 20 seconds, and in that moment, I knew that was my value to the department. I knew right in that moment that was not a job I could stay in. Healio: What happened after you left your full-time position? Lawrence-Reid: I still only knew about clinical medicine, but I knew that I could work part time, per diem or do locums. Those alternatives are still clinical, still treating patients, but there was not any real discussion or respect for doctors working that way. At the end of training, we started to get calls and texts from locum recruiters and agencies, and I asked my residency leadership about it. They were very dismissive. They said it is not legitimate, it\u2019s not viable and it\u2019s certainly not sustainable. After quitting my job, I thought, \u201cI did everything right.\u201d I took all the tests, did the residency, passed the boards, did the job I was supposed to do, and I\u2019m unhappy, underpaid and overworked. At that point, I said, \u201cI did everything they told me to do, so I\u2019m going to do what they told me not to do and see what happens.\u201d Healio: What were all the different opportunities you tried after that? Lawrence-Reid: It started with becoming a per diem doctor in my community at different clinics that needed help. It ended up feeling full-time, but as a per diem doctor, I still had control. I could decline shifts or take shifts, and that felt so good to me. Then I started doing locums, earning more in a week than I made in a month as a full-time doctor. At that point, I caught the bug. After those first two things started feeling good \u2014 and paying really well \u2014 that\u2019s when I thought there must be more. If I saw an opportunity or someone doing something cool on LinkedIn, I slid into their DMs. Almost always, those doctors were happy and free with their knowledge. That is how I discovered I could, as a pediatrician, do veteran disability exams, become an expert medical witness, open a Botox and filler aesthetic practice, do Social Security adjudications, be a medical writer. And I can pick up and put these things down as I want, feel and need. It has turned into such an amazing career that I did not think was possible. Healio: Now you run your own company, Doctoring Differently. How did that begin? Lawrence-Reid: Doctoring Differently was one of the pandemic business babies. 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