Physician Job Search

Finding a Physician Job

The physician’s job search is hard in today’s physician jobs market. The challenge of finding the right employment for a doctor varies by medical speciality and experience level.

For the junior physician, coming right out of residency, the right position often means finding the right practice to join. Your base salary is lower than the more established doctor’s, and you will probably be expected to take more frequent call. The benefits are that you come into an established patient base with a guaranteed physician salary. Your main challenge is building your personal patient base, one patient at a time. At this stage of your career you have a lot of flexibility – since you are not locked to a specific patient population, you can try doctoring in a variety of locations through locum tenens opportunities.

For the more senior doctor, the job search is somewhat different. Often you already have an established patient base, so moving to a different city might not be an option. Instead, the senior physician is often looking for a partnership to build up specific aspects of the medical practice or might be looking for a different group of partners. A restricted search within a specific city can be more difficult, and therefore more time consuming. Nonetheless, there are many resources available to help in the process – whether in a primary care field (eg. family practice jobs) or specialty (eg. neurology jobs or psychiatry jobs).

But whether you’re just starting out or transitioning from one hospital to another, your physician job search has to start with a gut-check of your top priorities.

Non-Traditional Physician Jobs

The number and quality of non-traditional physician jobs has been growing. Unlike the legal profession, which has successfully marketed itself outside of the courtroom, doctors have until recently focused on the classic roles in the clinic and in the hospital. While this hasn’t changed completely, there are signs that physicians can get work outside the clinic.

Many physician jobs are available with state and federal agencies. These are often desk jobs that pay well and have little to no associated liability. Healthcare consulting is a rapidly growing industry, focused on reducing practice costs and implementing mandated changes, such as HIPAA requirements. Physicians with real world experience are often in strong demand in such consulting firms.