Physicians’ Pathways to Non-Traditional Careers and Leadership Opportunities

Enriching Your Medical Career offers advice on how to make sense of your career goals, what questions to ask, and how to position yourself for success. Readers will learn to formulate concrete questions and devise a short and long-term career plan.

Increasingly, physicians are leveraging their medical training and expertise to pursue careers in non-traditional arenas.  Their goals are diverse: 

·         Explore consulting as a way to improve patient care

·         Lay the foundation for a career in academic medicine

·         Provide leadership in healthcare

·         Strengthen ties between a clinic and the community

·         Broaden one’s experience as a medical student

·         As a journalist or writer, open a window onto medicine for non-experts

Some physicians will pursue another degree, while others may not, in anticipation of moving into public service, business, education, law, or organized medicine. Their common ground is the desire to enhance their professional fulfillment.

Drs. Urman and Ehrenfeld’s book features individual chapters on the wide array of non-traditional careers for physicians, each one written by an outstanding leader in medicine who him- or herself has successfully forged a unique career path.  A final chapter brings together fascinating brief profiles – “case studies” – of physicians who have distinguished themselves professionally outside of traditional settings. 

Suitable for readers at any point in their medical career – practitioners, fellows, residents, and medical students – who want to explore possibilities beyond traditional medical practice, the book also sets out common-sense advice on topics such as work-life balance, mentorship, and the relationship between personality and job satisfaction. 

Section 1. How to Choose a Balanced Career Path.- Ch. 1.Changing Landscape of Career Opportunities in Medicine in the 21st Century: A Brave New World.- Ch. 2.Personality Type and Job Satisfaction.- Ch. 3.Career Decision Making in Medicine: Practical Approaches.- Ch. 4.Work-Life Balance.- Ch. 5.Avoiding Physician Burnout.- Ch. 6.Combined Degree Opportunities.- Ch. 7.Finding Fulfillment Outside of Medicine.- Section 2.Business, Consulting, and Industry.- Ch. 8.Managerial Development.- Ch. 9.The Pharmaceutical and Medical Device Industry.- Ch. 10.Healthcare Consulting.- Ch. 11.Physicians in Management.- Ch. 12.Physicians and Entrepreneurship.- Section 3.Medicine at the Macro Level:  Public Health, Global Health, &Public Policy.- Ch. 13.Public Health.- Ch. 14.Public Policy and Public Administration.- Ch. 15.Global Health.- Section 4.Academia.- Ch. 16.Careers in Academic Research.- Ch. 17.Careers in Medical Education.- Ch. 18.Medical School Deans and Other Senior Administrative Officers.- Section 5.Law, Advocacy, & Public Service.- Ch. 19.Legal Careers in Medicine.- Ch. 20.Additional Opportunities in the Legal Field and Applying to Law School.- Ch. 21.Politics and Legislative Advocacy.- Ch. 22.Organized Medicine.- Ch. 23.Physician Opportunities in the United States Uniformed/Military Services.- Section 6.Social Sciences, Journalism, Architecture, and the Arts.- Ch. 24.MD-PhD in the Social Sciences.- Ch. 25.Journalism, Publishing and Writing.- Ch. 26.A Different Angle: Physician and Architect.- Ch. 27.Enriching Your Career through the Arts.- Section 7.Bioethics, Spirituality, Alternative Medicine.- Ch. 28.Patient Safety.- Ch. 29.Bioethics.- Ch. 30.Spirituality and Medicine.- Ch. 31.Complementary and Alternative Medicine.- Ch. 32.Volunteering in Your Community: Think Globally, Act Locally.- Section 8.Real-life Stories.- Ch. 33.Leaders in the Successful Pursuit of  Non-Traditional Careers in Medicine.