Your job should offer a sense of satisfaction and should reassure you that you made the right decision about your profession. Otherwise, you will face regular dissatisfaction and an inability to feel content with your job. If you find yourself thinking this at your current point in time, moving on to something new might be refreshing and beneficial.
Coming to the Decision of Changing your Current Job
Finding a fulfilling career and striking a work-life balance after many years of rigorous training, coursework and internships can be a gradual journey for medical professionals. Most graduate medical students are trained for the discipline they want to specialize in, thus generally their career trajectory after graduation is evident. However, each stage of professional life offers the opportunity to learn more about your talents, interests, and the challenges you may face as well. So, after getting to know themselves better, practitioners may sometimes realize their current jobs are not the perfect match for their personalities. It is at this point that they would have the feeling of dissatisfaction with their current jobs and begin to think about new working areas related to their specializations. A physician who is no longer focused on their work also negatively affect the company they work with. This is important to note as, even employers want their employees to feel valued, and be able to increase the productivity and efficiency of the company. As such, becoming aware of whether it’s time to move on to a new job or not is ultimately beneficial to both you and your employer.
This post aims to provide a helpful article to inform medical professionals when it may be time to explore alternate their career trajectories.
Signs it might be time to change jobs
1. You would become apathetic to your current job
Doctors save lives and make huge differences in patients’ lives by helping them with their illnesses. Thanks to medical professionals, people can recover faster from an ailment, manage symptoms or provide advice on the psychology of living with a disabling injury. The unique ability to make patients feel valued, or cared for after a huge accident or trauma, even if he cannot be totally cured, makes a huge impact on patients and also their families. From the point of view of physicians, being able to touch a person’s life should not only be the duty of the job but also the part of their work that gives them happiness and satisfaction. While continuing to work within their own specialization, medical staff moving away from this feeling of satisfaction would begin to become insensitive to their job and their job functions. A cardiac surgeon should be able to reassure and comfort the patient she will operate on, or an aesthetic surgeon must be willing to offer her patients a happier life in line with their wishes. A doctor who finds themselves feeling increasingly apathetic towards these values, is unable to enjoy the pleasure of healing or a practitioner who starts making careless mistakes because they lack professional engagement should probably seek a new role that will provide him with greater job satisfaction. A dissatisfied medical professional would not only fail to meet his own, or their employers but also their patients’ expectations.
Medicine is an intensive profession as well as demanding, as healthcare is a basic human need. Health issues need to be followed closely, even at the busiest times, because without proper treatment and recovery, a patient cannot focus on the likes of their career, relationships or whatever else that they care about. Being a physician requires higher levels of patience and attention. As a doctor, you have the power to truly help people and improve their lives. For such a sensitive profession it is quite normal to feel demotivated, even for practitioners who are in love with their jobs, they will face periods when they feel intense pressure in their personal lives or in their working areas. Yet, if a pediatrician can’t remember the last time she enjoyed examining and dealing with kids, or a general practitioner has been doing routine checkups of patients with a huge dissatisfaction for longer periods, it may be time to reassess your career goals. You can explore our job list for new roles incase you need to refresh your career.
2. Your current job is negatively impacting your personal life
Having a busy career, especially in the field of medicine would require lots of hard work and sensitivity, patience, love, and compassion. When trying to achieve excellence in a demanding job, it is challenging for medical staff to maintain proper work-life balance. Consider a primary care physician who can not get on well with her co-workers, a chronically exhausted emergency practitioner, or a surgeon, who is being affected after a bad surgery, its expected that healthcare professionals face challenging periods within their job. However, if the negative energy or the stressors of the working area comes home with you and affects the relationship with your friends and family, or if those around you begin to suggest a change in your profession regularly, it is probably time to change jobs. At the very least, physical reactions due to work that have developed to the point of affecting your personal life also indicate that you need to take some time off work. Permanently being tired continually and being isolated from the activities of those around you due to intense work stress would weaken the relationships with your family or your friends. For example, a surgeon who is a new parent may not be able to observe the development of his baby due to his late-night work, or may struggle show the necessary attention to his family due to mental fatigue caused by the heavy work pressure. Periodic stressors are definitely not sufficient enough to result in a career change, but such periods can show doctors the importance of work-life balance and help set priorities. In order to actively maintain in their social or familial relationships in addition to maintaining a career, its important to assess whether your current career path is one that is agreeable to you.
3. Having a job that aligns with your core values is important for career growth
Doctors spend most of their days at work, with the company they work for. Therefore, cultural alignment with their employers and co-workers is critically important for practitioners to have optimal productivity and higher levels of job satisfaction. This misalignment can come in many forms. For example, a foreign doctor working at an international company may not feel alienated during his own cultural holidays since he will be working. Or, a general practitioner working at a new clinic, may struggle to adapt to the needs of a new neighborhood and community. Yet, a doctor who is in conformity with his company’s and the country’s values, and understands the demands of his job would get along with his co-workers more easily and have a bigger chance to make progress in their job. This applies to a variety of factors, even something as simple as language. If a physician working at a foreign company can speak their manager’s or co-workers’ native language, they would not only be able to treat patients more effectively, but also build closer professional relationships, ultimately benefitting their social life as well. A physician who realizes that his cultural values do not match with the medical institution, in general, may want to turn to a new job or workplace that is suitable for his own cultural values and where he can feel more comfortable in their career growth.\
If you feel stuck, just know there are many options available for career changers
It is easy to get caught up in the day to day and feel there isn’t an easy way to change your job, after all your current job would be a result of your hard work and interests. But during busy years, you may find yourself seeking a switch to another field of medicine. It’s not easy to come to this decision, medical specialties require years of training depending on their specialty to move to a new specialty. Yet, a doctor who finds themselves apathetic, or tired of daily patient care can turn to scientific research, medical writing or even a corporate role in which they can aim to improve the working conditions of medical staff. Or, a physician sick of working in hospitals/clinics may start working as a medical practitioner on a ship, in the army, or even at a prison. As such, doctors who feel that she cannot spend many years in a fixed specialty or working environments should rest easy, there are many opportunities available for medically trained professionals that focus on a completely different market or even setting.
Should I definitely change my job if I deal with one of the listed reasons?
Listed are just a few of the factors that will cause doctors to change their jobs. Periodic dissatisfaction should not cause resignation. Here are some useful areas to guide your thinking before coming to a decision on changing your current job:
- your personal career goals
- development opportunities at your current job
- work-life balance
- work environment
- employee turnover
- job satisfaction
When you sense a long-standing problem in your profession and if it starts to affect you, your patients, and your work negatively, you should first turn to yourself and look for the problem introspectively. At this stage, you should always be honest with yourself and open to innovations for a healthier professional life, because the control of your career is always in your hands. After your detailed observation process, if you still dream about a new career path, check out the jobs on Doctor Jobs Today.
About Doctor Jobs Today
Doctor Jobs Today is the first job-seeking platform in Southeast Asia dedicated to serving the job searching needs of healthcare professionals. We have created a space to connect employers and medical job seekers seamlessly. As part of the healthcare community, we understand that traditional job portals are not catered toward medical doctors. So we decided to create a portal advertising only the most relevant jobs from the top employers within the industry because we are just as picky as you are!
Doctor Jobs Today has the right vacancy whether you are looking for a higher salary, a better-equipped hospital for your specialization, or even a career shift from patient care.
About Docquity
If you feel like your educational and professional experience has not been sufficient to make your CV pop, expanding the network to other healthcare professionals to practise peer-to-peer learning might be the answer. One of the ways to do it is by joining a social platform for healthcare professionals, such as Docquity.
Docquity is the region’s largest and most trusted community of doctors, bringing you real-time knowledge from thousands of doctors worldwide. Today, Docquity has over 300,000 doctors spread across six countries in Asia.
Meet experts and trusted peers across Asia where you can safely discuss clinical cases, get up-to-date insights from webinars and research journals, and earn CME/CPD credits through certified courses. All with the ease of a mobile app available on Android & iOS platforms!
