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- Jun 4, 2022
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Most people don't realize that to practice medicine in the US, you not only need to graduate from medical school but also complete a residency program. (The residency program is what you specialize in whether it's family medicine, internal medicine, surgery, etc.) In addition, you need to get a medical license from the medical board of state you want to practice in. And in general, you also need to sit and pass the boards for your specialty so that you can become "board-certified." (These boards are not the same as the general medical boards which you needed to pass in order to graduate medical school and get your license.)
For likely profiteering reasons, this "board-certification" has become a gold standard within the past several decades or so and one cannot find employment if they are not BE/BC (board eligible/board certified). (BE is when someone finished residency but either hasn't taken that final specialty board exam or took it but failed and need to retake it.)
Can you guess where this is leading to? I did the college, the med school, and part of the residency. And then I couldn't take it anymore. How sick the system is, how sick the patients are, how we as doctors really really really suck at helping them because imho, we're just glorified drug dealers.
Anyway, I also got my medical license. My plan was to open a private practice and do cash pay (since many health insurance companies also don't wanna work with us lowly non-board-certified docs). I hopped onto the bandwagon of a physician who promised everyone could open up their dream private practice. It didn't work out for me. Partially because I got in my own way.
Life has been rough. PTSD from medical education and quite likely childhood PTSD as well. I'm intent on that not getting in my way. I'm currently unemployed (again) so my current goal is finding any old job to pay for my bare minimum and for better therapy while figuring out how I can track into the fastlane.
That's it. There's obviously a lot more but just wanted to share the bare bones of what's been going on.
And I swear, MJ's thoughts and ideas have pulled me out of a depressive funk more than once.
For likely profiteering reasons, this "board-certification" has become a gold standard within the past several decades or so and one cannot find employment if they are not BE/BC (board eligible/board certified). (BE is when someone finished residency but either hasn't taken that final specialty board exam or took it but failed and need to retake it.)
Can you guess where this is leading to? I did the college, the med school, and part of the residency. And then I couldn't take it anymore. How sick the system is, how sick the patients are, how we as doctors really really really suck at helping them because imho, we're just glorified drug dealers.
Anyway, I also got my medical license. My plan was to open a private practice and do cash pay (since many health insurance companies also don't wanna work with us lowly non-board-certified docs). I hopped onto the bandwagon of a physician who promised everyone could open up their dream private practice. It didn't work out for me. Partially because I got in my own way.
Life has been rough. PTSD from medical education and quite likely childhood PTSD as well. I'm intent on that not getting in my way. I'm currently unemployed (again) so my current goal is finding any old job to pay for my bare minimum and for better therapy while figuring out how I can track into the fastlane.
That's it. There's obviously a lot more but just wanted to share the bare bones of what's been going on.
And I swear, MJ's thoughts and ideas have pulled me out of a depressive funk more than once.
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