"No physician ever intends to become
so involved with their medical careers
that they end up losing their families,
dignity, and ambition."
The searing truth of pushing yourself beyond your ultimate potential in your medical career is sandbagged with problems caused by psychological obsolescence. Meaning that you end up chasing an ultimate desire for your career for reasons that become outdated and that run counter to your own principles.
We are today in our private medical practice careers at the peak of burnout when it has become necessary to charge through over 60 medical patients daily, fighting government fee restrictions and mandates, see our incomes diminishing, tolerating lack of rapport with patients, and expecting these disruptive factors to continue and get worse.
Understanding that the normal reaction to these intolerable factors is to back off from as many of these as financially possible, but can't, because most physicians would lose their private medical practices, for financial reasons if they did. One can rightly say that being overworked and under paid isn't limited to the claims of union workers.
Even employed physicians in this pandemic were laid-off or lost their jobs. Surveys have documented that private medical practices suffered severely during the pandemic--large numbers of whom required financial help.
These external factors were not under our control. But there is another side to this that is instigated by your own decisions.
The land mines that lie in the paths of medical doctors...
If one begins with the most obvious problem, lack of enough income to provide for a lifestyle commensurate with a physician's education, skills and talents, value to the human population, status in our society, and the fulfillment of all the expectations every physician has in mind, any resolution of money/income issue has always been the one factor that continues to incite hopelessness.
You've probably spent at least a passing moment wondering how exactly any physician can ever reach their optimal potential while fighting off the festering wound of financial problems in their private medical practice. It would not be a problem if seeing many more patients daily was the answer. But then, that leads to more stress and longer hours day after day to meet the
overhead costs.
It might be better for you not to read this list of the land mines that can and do lead to the destruction of medical careers, among other, just as important aftermaths.
Limited List that applies to physicians and medical practice...
- Burnout for sure--private medical practice
- Stress and fear of making mistakes in diagnosis and treatments
- Fear of medical malpractice law suits
- Concern about disabilities that could occur throughout their careers
- Multi-tasking management consequences
- Government increasing fee restrictions
- Government control of healthcare, pending
- Loss of medical practice for financial reasons
- Lack of a business education leading to practice failure
- Stress caused health problems that sanction one's confidence
- Stress as cause of disability and practice compromise
- Stress induced changes how patients are treated and managed
- Stress leading to drug addiction or alcohol addiction
- Personality changes that reduces practice income
- Self-limitations that obstruct a growing practice income
- Becoming tired of fighting government mandates for practice
- Adding marketing and business management to the necessities of practice
- Conflicts with medical peers
- Medical peer pressure against your medical care of patients
- Reputation conflicts that compromise your healthcare process
Yes, I'm sure that you are able to add another 50 issues to this list which points out the problem we all have with lists. What happens is that it requires a deeper thinking process into actual conflicts, issues, and events that you have already had to deal with in your own medical
practice functions. When you see the truth, it helps you to make better and more profitable decisions in your career through the process of due diligence.
When you sit down and look at the list you made, it alerts you to the hundreds of factors that you live with and are forced to either tolerate or intentionally find a way to avoid 24/7. It tells you how much stress and concern you are forced to confront daily to practice medicine at all--let alone the others you suppress mentally outside of your medical practice activities.
Limited list of factors that often do interfere or prevent your obligations to your family and friends.
- Often miss your kids school events
- Vacation plans become disrupted
- Your spouse criticizes you absences
- Home obligations are often interrupted or remain incomplete
- Decreasing interactions with your kids
- Minimal time to instruct or punish kids--left for spouse to do alone
- Spouse becomes finance manager of household
- Minimal time spent with spouse communications
- Spouse independently makes home finance decisions
- Don't invite friends over for dinner or conversation
- Spouse forced to become independent of husband/wife lifestyle
- Friends stay away more often--less invitations offered to you
- Kids in teens more difficult for one spouse to manage
- Church and religion becomes unimportant
- Kids on street drugs without your knowledge
- Spouse works in your office--office management done by spouse, not you
- Spouse becomes independent of medical doctor
- Kids education becomes neglected and left to schools to teach them
- Loving relationships become weak or nonexistent
- Divorce risk, arguments, home problems increase gradually
The balance between medical practice obligations and home obligations is often disrupted. The reality is that the balance process is different for every couple and it becomes a gradual adaptation to all of the work and home situations where each husband and wife can find satisfaction and fulfillment in the balance they have agreed to. In most cases I find that the greatest impediment to a successful balance between medical practice success and the home stability are three issues that rarely are considered.
1. When occupations collide... When a physician marries someone of similar levels of education in another career destination, it automatically creates a division in friends and associates, a division in success priorities, a division of lifestyles, a division of family activities, a division on how to raise their children. A physician friend of mine married a spouse who was a business executive--ended in separation, then divorce after 8 years.
2. When lifestyles collide... When a physician marries out of his or her economic level, there will always remain a significant difference in thoughts about most activities they prefer to join in, thoughts about financial issues, debt, salaries, and thoughts about what they choose to do together that appeals to both partners. The physician who delivered my son had married a beautiful lady who was a concert pianist and college graduate--ended in divorce about 12 years later.
3. When personal ambitions collide... The most risky situation occurs when the physician candidate chooses to marry a highschool sweetheart who has no ambition except to have kids and maintain a household. That circumstance is a perfect set up for divorce. The physician dwells on continuous education and partner cares less for education benefits. This was my mistake. So, if your aunt or family member pulls you aside one day before college and proceeds to give you advice about not getting married until you are in medical school, don't be a smart-ass and ignore her or you will regret it for the rest of your life.
When we get married before medical school it is for a few stupid, immature, and purely emotional reason...
1. We feel the need for a sexual partner we think we can trust.
2. We think we know what love is all about--Just feel it all over.
3. We want someone to be with us for support and encouragement.
4. We need a mother or father figure close by.
Now, at my old age, I have learned what should occur prior to any marriage arrangement. It's not a new concept, because some religions require that the couple be counseled about the sand traps, pot holes, and cliff hangers that saturate the road to a happy and lasting marriage. I would hazard a guess that 99% of all marriages today are completely ignorant about and ignore any counseling from anyone.
It's exactly the same thought and attitude that nearly all physicians have had about the idea of needing a business and marketing education to be successful. This blissful projection of an imaginary medical future career seems to persist regardless of the documented facts to the contrary.
Mentioning the need for counseling to any prenuptial couple today might result in a beating or worse. We may not have to be concerned about this, even if it is a great idea, because couples have taken to living together, unmarried. Divorce is a huge angry monster with long sharp teeth that scars our hearts and minds forever, as we all know.
Physicians, because of their own natural attraction towards families like the ones you may have grown up in, always face the personal battle of making decisions for our individual lives that can
and often do cause even more problems piled on top of the ones we already face. Ones that are extremely difficult to back away from each time, yet, need to be made. Physicians are natural decision makers, but are short on always making those decisions that end up being better than the ones we leave behind.
"This author and website takes no responsibility
for the suggestions made above that may save
your marriage or not. We make an incredible effort
to marginate all advice, comments, and mentally
disabling content you get from reading between the
lines or that suddenly appears from your subconscious
mind. Instead, we are proud to offer all the ubiquitous
information found on Google that you haven't found
yet, which should help you avoid divorce or live
without divorce."
Decision making for physicians is far more complex than anyone imagines because, one way or another, any important decision affects both your medical practice and your family in different ways and with unequal results. We probably can agree that as we move along in life experiences and with more knowledge available, we are usually able to come up with much better decisions and results.
What seems to always poke holes in our decisions at any time we make them is the difficulty of deciding which flag to salute, which side of the decision is more important, and what side of the decision will provide us with the most satisfaction and enjoyment in our lives. But how do we know which side of the decision will turn out to our greatest advantage in the future? Because we don't know that when we make a decision, we have to rely on our intuition and emotions and hope for the best results.
The most important decisions for physicians to make commonly are about whether our family or our medical practice business is more important for us. I look at that decision as something relegated to time and the circumstances that begin to comingle over time for that answer. The longer the time, the better the decision and our accumulated wisdom to make the decision. In other words, the right decision we make about a situation or event is far more obvious over time.
So, I ask you, is your family or your medical career more important to you?
For most physicians this question requires such deep thought and even deeper introspection than they are capable of mentally handling, decisions are formulated by circumstances and not by personal choice decisions. The extent of the mental trauma and physical effects over time are far more stressful daily than one cares to recognize.
Some physicians try to make these decisions by Benjamin Franklin's method. Make a two column list, one side "pro" and the other side "con" about the issue. It doesn't provide answers, but it sure makes a person think very deeply about the problem and the decisions. Beyond this, it's your turn to do your own research on the topic.
But, there is a decision that you can make that will provide a higher income for your medical practice management resulting from your medical practice marketing.
Requirements for maximizing your medical practice income
1. Good knowledge of medical practice management
2. Having the energy for continuous medical practice marketing
3. Medical practice business planning is important.
4. Marketing for physicians and their office staff is a winning set up.
5. Learn what makes a medical practice business successful.
6. Your medical practice business system is essential.
7. Bothe practice marketing and physician marketing is rewarding.
8. Business success is the objective of all physicians in private medical practice.
9. My business website—www.marketingamedicalpractice.com
----Professional Probe----
"This is a photo of the two room school house,
8 grades, 4 grades in each room, where I was taught
by Mrs.,Kutchall, big 8 ft. sliding wood doors between
the two rooms, attended grade one through six, in
our very small town of Platea, PA, 300 population,
1943 to 1949, still standing today, same physical
structure but renovated inside now as a town hall.
Had no idea where I would end up in my life."
Articles©2013-2022/CGG INVESTMENTS LLC. All rights reserved. #95, 3-16-22
