I am a married mother of 2 small children, and my psychiatry practice is burning me out on every level... Not only is "part-time" turning to full-time, but my patients' depression, anger, and anxiety have begun to totally drain me.

My thoughtful husband, also a physician, found this website for me, and it has been amazingly helpful to hear about other women's similar experiences.

I am actively looking for a new career, ideally one where I can use my medical degree, but also where I can be creative, possibly work from home, and definitely have more flexible hours.

I have heard about jobs being a medical consultant for books/TV/movies, and I wonder if anyone out there has contacts? I have not been successful in finding info online about this...

Thanks!

I am currently working part time at an urgent care clinic, but I am also very interested in pursuing a non-clinical based career (I have a child with special needs). After reading numerous articles, posts, and books on nonclinical careers, I too am trying to figure out what the next step should be (ie - contacts, etc). Any advice would also be greatly appreciated!

Thanks!

That seems to be the million dollar question here. It is hard to find work outside of practice where we can use our medical degree but not actually see patients and still make enough money to pay our bills.

Hi all--
This is my first post to MomMD. I am a 42 y o OBGYN who stopped work two years ago. I'm married to an ENT and we have three kids (boy/girl twins and a third girl). We hit crisis point as a family when the twins were starting kindergarten, I was getting sued, and we had just moved to be back close to our four older parents. My mom was having her second cancer surgery and my dad, whose cardiopulmonary health had been dwindling for a long time, was starting to show signs of dementia. I like to say that 'our family was having lates' and needed to be delivered as soon as possible, or we as a family would not survive. A couple of additional twists and turns led us to feel that my staying home was the best solution.

I have no doubt in my mind that leaving work was the right thing to do. HOWEVER-- I am ready to do something. Something. I've been interested in writing for a long time, but just haven't gotten it together to write that Great Work of Fiction that is inside my head.

Anyway... spurred into action by this site, I contacted a a few places to ask about medical writing. Surprisingly, one called me back! They are a Board Review Course company, and they just happen to really need an OBGYN to write and review content for them.

I have no idea what they will pay, or how much work they will have for me to do, but I hope things work out. We have a telephone meeting scheduled for tomorrow afternoon.

The moral here: keep knocking on doors and asking the questions. I do have a feeling that something will show itself!

Hi Cyndi-Lou!

Your name jumped out when I was lurking...nice to find you in 2 places :-)

Good luck tomorrow.

aka ryankckids on PR

:wave: HI Heather! How great to see you over here! I wondered if you knew about this site. Turns out you have known longer than I have.

My DH wonders how I'll survive if this job comes through-- "It's really gonna cut into your sewing time..." -- My response: "Yeah, but it might start to pay for my sewing habit!" :rolleyes:

I'll post about the job and whether it pans out-- XOXO

CindyLou

:crossfingers: :crossfingers:

lemme know if they're looking for fp's :scratchchin:

Or psychiatrists!

At the risk of sounding like an advertiser (I'm not!), this is with the Challenger CME company. They do CME/board review for IM, FP, Pedes, Path, OBGYN, and ERMed. Sorry, no psyc. However, Dr. H should consider giving them a call...!

My mom was a psychiatrist-- graduated from Oklahoma Univ School of Med in 1960. I LOVED psychiatry! I've often wondered how my life would be different now if I had gone into psyc instead of OB... :scratchchin: My DH encouraged me to, as did my parents, but it hit a little close to home for me with my mom already doing it-- it had a lot of family strings attached for me. I hate that it has exhausted you to the point that it has, though. It would be quite wearing, I think-- especially since the 3rd party payers won't recognize the importance of what you do.

How did you find them?

Do they need any pediatricians?

Haven't posted for a while, as I've been testing the waters with challenger.com. I've decided that they are a quite reputable company with a very good product. Just a note: nobody is going to get rich by exclusively doing writing or editing with them. I will probably average per hour what the cleaning ladies around her make initially, till I get up to speed, and it'll never be crazy amounts of cash. What I will get, however, is a great review of my own topic; publications on my CV; access to all their CME credits (this is HUGE, financially!); and something fun that I like to do and that has COMPLETELY flexible hours. I can volunteer at school, snuggle my sick child, and still do this job (in my PJ's, if I want to). For me, for now, I think it's a great thing. For someone who wants a little supplement honorarium to their day job, it would be great, too. For someone looking for a way to support her hubby and family... not so much.
mom2redheads, they do have a BIG pedes section-- why don't you contact them and see if they need people? Go to their web page and look in the administrative personnel for the person to write to. That's what I did-- I sent a short cover letter with my info and that I wanted to find a med writing or editing position. Attaching a CV couldn't hurt, either.
Good luck!
Again, I give this info just as a mom who contacted a company, not b/c of any affiliation, etc... this is not an advertisement.

Cindy

Cindy,
I went to challenger.com and it was a motor freight web site.
Do you have another web address?
Thanks,
dianne

OOPS!!!

That website is
http://www.chall.com/

So sorry about the TIA... :boggled:

Cindy

Thanks,
Dianne

cindy-lou:
i've been struggling with the idea of leaving clinicals all together to have more time with my family. it feels good to hear that other mom docs are doing it. what a creative route-writing! but more importantly, you're getting the time you want with your family. keep us up to date on how the job is going.

would love to hear from any of you guys about the medical writing as I am an internist looking to supplement my husband's income while I stay at home with kids

cindy-lou --I don't know if you still look at this site, but I started writing for the same cme company and enjoy it and so I wanted to say thanks! I wondered if you were still writing for them, or if you found a way to get more responsibility?

So, how much does this pay?

Hi,

I am physician and professional medical writer. I was in private practice for 8 years and wanted to spend more time with my family and still work. I started a consulting company rather than being employed by some of the websites, and have been writing for the web as well as editing medical books from India. I have plenty of work, and the flexibility is unbeatable. Let me know if you have questions about how to get started. I have been doing this for 2 years.

Devi
www.prescribinginformation.com

Hi again,

The pay varies with each client, if it's a book or web copy, and how experienced you are with writing business proposals, managing your online time, and your professional writing experience. I thought I was a pretty sharp writer, and I had to write a lot in med school, but I've learned that writing a thesis a lot different from writing books, blogs, web content and learning programs.

I hope this helps. The freedom that being a writer has afforded me vs the private practice model has been priceless.

Warmly,

Dr. Devi
www.prescribinginfo.com

I don't consider myself "a writer". If I wanted to break into this field, how could I go about learning more about it and developing the skills to do so?

Try the American Medical Writers Association (AMWA). It's the professional organization for medical writers.

There are also programs, usually at the masters level, for science writing. UC Santa Cruz has a well-respected program, and MIT has one too.

Has anyone here done any of these programs or is a member of AMWA?

My husband works with many physician medical writers. You may want to contact him if you have any specific questions about medical writing by visiting his blog (it's in my signature).

Thanks for listing the association! That will be a real help for me professionally.

Devi
www.prescribinginformation.com

What is the name of your consulting company or how did you go about getting this off the ground? I would love to get into writing and consulting but am having difficulty figuring out where to start or who to contact.

Hi!

I started my own consulting company as a medical writer. I started out by creating a profile with writing samples on Elance and have now edited and ghostwritten books for other physicians in my speciality - pain management. Since I also have an interest and background in CAM therapies and Integrative Medicine, that niche has proven to be a steady and continuous source of income. I have written some training programs, academic articles, web content for other physicians and now I am doing a video shoot for one of the programs that I have created the content for.
I am not the fastest typist or earnings would be double. If you type fast, and do a deep brush up on grammar and punctuation, and find a niche, like say, pediatrics, or psychiatry in medical writing, Elance is an excellent way to get started.
I am a recent member to this forum and i am surprised how many women are searching for non-clinical, medical work. I hope this helps. I have an interview I did recently for a blog in the UK about how i did this coming out in a few weeks. I'll share it when it posts.

Devi
www.prescribinginformation.com

If I saw a sample of your writing, and discovered what field of medicine you enjoy the most, or have the most experience with, I could give you some pointers. If you are comfortable with using the administrative side of web sites, it helps. Also, being very organized is a big plus. I don't use any fancy technology - just the GTD system by David Allen, a "Low-Information Diet," and Skype for phone meetings. It does help that I was using Elance for 2 years to "outsource" some of my admin, billing, legal and assistant work before I started providing writing services.

Hope this helps...

Devi
www.prescribinginformation.vom