Kurt Vonnegut and Joseph Heller once met at a party thrown by a well-known billionaire—back when a billion dollars actually meant something.
Vonnegut later recalled that he observed to Heller that their host had earned more in a single day than Heller had ever earned from his bestseller “Catch-22.”
“Yes, that’s right,” Vonnegut remembered Heller responding. “But I have something that he’ll never have.”
“What’s that?”
“Enough.”
As you consider your practice options, remember that word — enough.
Your personal goals essentially boil down to that single word. You want to get to a point where you have enough.
Enough money. Enough patients. Enough free-time.
And you may seek to achieve this nirvana through the tool of corporate medicine employment.
But there’s one problem—for such an employer, there is never “enough”.
Never enough profit. Never enough productivity. Never enough cost control.
Explicitly (through metric expectations) and implicitly (though EHR upgrades) your employer will constantly want more.
It will be a treadmill on steroids.
What you give them will never be enough.
But that’s ok — if you treat your job as a job.
See your patients, check your boxes, go home on time.
Set limits on the personal connection and emotional engagement you are willing to allow for your patients and co-workers —just as you would for any other job.
Set limits while avoiding the dreaded Performance Improvement Plan.
Unfortunately, too many young clinicians walk into their first job not understanding what’s going to be required.
Their model is their residency, where their warm body rather than their “productivity” is the generator of value.
And using that as their guide through the corporate world, they end up bitter, disengaged, suicidal — consumed.
So if you decide to use corporate medicine as a tool—to get experience, to pay off debt — that’s fine.
Just remember it’s a tool. Set limits. Learn to recognize manipulative management techniques.
And then, when you’ve finished using the tool, put it down.
Walk away.
Avoid being consumed — and spit out.
Then, if you’re fortunate, you can live out your calling.
And create a life where you — and you alone — decide what is enough.
Need unbiased guidance finding your ideal medical practice, contact me, no obligation just help and value.