In the last article we covered some basic tips about evaluating a possible job. Today we'll step it up a bit with the essential pearls:
1) The single thing you need to do is find out if anybody has left the group, hospital, or clinic you are interested in, find them, and talk to them. They may have left on good terms, for family reasons, geography, or a vertical move, or they may give you insight into problems that will make your practice and life miserable.
2) Where will you practice? One facility or several? Admitting privileges at one hospital or several? Have members of your group had trouble getting OR time or beds at one hospital vs. another? Is there bad blood between hospitals? Does your group favor one versus the other and why? Will you have any choice or do you have to follow the group's preferences?
3) Although you need to read it with a great deal of skepticism, ask for a copy of the hospital/clinic/group's annual report, if they have one. Find out how often the organization has been "in the black" (i.e. profitable) during the last 10 years. Same administration in place? If not, why not?
4) Be cautious about accepting a job because a particular mentor or famous colleague will be there. In academics, people move with notable frequency. Entire departments can change in months; in cities people can move between medical centers rapidly. You don't want to show up July 1 to find out your mentor and her entire staff moved to the opposite coast, leaving you as acting chief while the hospital staffs your division with locum tenens.
5) Regarding equipment: if it isn't there when you are there interviewing, then it isn't there. Repeat that in your mind. If there's something essential to your practice - 32 slice CT scanner with 3D capabilities, state of the art cysto room, a particular endoscope - and you are assured it will be there by the time you arrive, or it is "in the budget", or "we'll work with you" do not accept the job based on that. In hospital budgets those things get cut out faster than a melanoma. If it isn't there when you are there, it isn't there.
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Dr. Joseph M. Ullman is an American Board of Radiology Certified General and Interventional Radiologist with 16 years of practice experience and the author of Getting Down to Business: The New Doctor's Guide. For more information, visit newdocsguide.com.
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