Health Ticket

 As an emergency medicine physician, I have to make sound decisions every day in the ER. In fact, that’s most of what I do every day – make wise, informed decisions based on my medical training and the best needs of my patients. And I have to make them quickly, sometimes with the lives of my patients in the balance.

I wish I could say I always make good decisions about my own career. Unfortunately, I can’t. Take my last job, at a hospital in Alabama, for example. The position sounded so good in the online ad on the reputable emergency medicine job board. You say, “Well, of course it did, silly, it was an ad, for pete’s sake.”  True enough, but the position sounded even better when I called and arranged an interview with the hospital hiring manager. And it sounded better yet during the actual interview.  I asked all the right questions (or so I thought), accepted the position, flew home and started packing.

My first shift at this new hospital was enough to convince me I had made a serious mistake in accepting the position. I won’t specify exactly how I knew; suffice it to say that what I had been told in the interview room was not what I was experiencing in the emergency room.  After calling and commiserating with a fellow ER physician in another city, I took his advice and called a physician recruiter which specializes in finding permanent and locum tenens positions for EM physicians like me.

The person I worked with at this recruitment company really listened to my sad tale. Then he quickly came up with several immediate locum tenens openings at ERs where the need to find a doc was as urgent as any of the cases being wheeled in through the door.

The result? With the help of this recruiter, I found a great job that – surprise! – actually turned out to be great!  Next time I’ll make another sound decision – give this recruiter a call before I start looking for my next job!