Fix your job

[piqaboo]

I was out for 17 days, and yesterday was interesting.
Fortunately, I set things up so I could function. But today, I'm trying to remember where I was in 4 different projects, and how to do whatever it is I do. Oh my!

Yesterday we got one of those scary emails at 10:30, "Please report to Room 05 at 11" signed by the VP.
It was the best of all possible outcomes tho. Current director is retiring, and they picked a tolerable replacement from the existing company staff. We shall go on....

[piqaboo]

My sister has called me at work this afternoon and is chatting away and keeps asking why I sound distracted and why I dont seem to have too much to talk about.

Sheesh! I work in cubical land and I've told her that over and over and over! Get a freaking clue !!!



She's still AT IT!!!!!!!!

[Selma in Sandy Eggo]

:sympathy:

[monkeymd2b]

I need a job to fix...I'm actually seeing the light at the end of the tunnel and now I've been having mini panic attacks thinking about my future employment. I wasn't liking any of the clinics I had checked out and at the moment, the big health care hospital owned groups don't have positions in OB in the community I want to stay in. Then I found out that the reason why was because the lone male FP/OB feels that his numbers are low because of his Y chromosome and told the clinic manager that he doesn't want them to hire another female FP/OB so they listed it only as non-OB. Since I really do enjoy working for this large group (okay, I love the benefits especially), I tried to convince myself and others that I was fine not doing OB. Apparently I wasn't since when I sat down with my advisor last week thursday, I totally lost it and in my frustration over not finding a good fit for me yet, I cried. I cry when I'm very frustrated. It's who I am but after a good cry I move on and get motivated and get stuff done. Anyway, that day he had called me earlier to tell me about a private practice that would want an FP/OB provider and they actually deliver at our hospital. The lead doctor was actually at my hospital waiting for her patient to deliver naturally and I was on call on saturday so we talked a little that day until I got busy again and then today I checked out the clinic. It's pretty nice and they have an electronic medical record so that makes it even better. Everyone seems pretty nice. So on to the next step of discussing the nitty gritty details of contracts and whatnot. She said that they would have to create a whole new contract for me since I would be the first MD to be hired (she and the 2 other docs are DOs) that also does OB. She was more or less given the clinic so she didn't need to make a contract for herself. Currently there are 4 OB providers - herself and 3 midwives. I've actually met the midwives before when I did my OB month since they were there more frequently than she was. They all share the OB patients so if you're not on OB call, you don't do the delivery. The patients see all of them throughout the course of their pregnancy so they at least meet everyone who could be delivering the baby. Kind of nice actually. So I'm getting excited now but I still hold out hope for the other one. I don't think I'm very good at negotiating adding in job priveleges and one of the other docs who works with that male doc said all the other docs have been trying to convince him to change his mind. And my advisor said he was also going to try to get him to change his mind but I'd hate to be resented by a colleague as the one who made it even more difficult for him to get OB numbers. So frustrating...don't worry, I'm not crying - I got all that out of my system last week.

Well, I'm going to exercise. Only 4 more months until I'm released into the world as a full fledged doctor. time flies by...cliche but so true!

[piqaboo]

Nice to hear from you, MD of monkeys to be!
Good luck.

[BigJon@Work]

Best of Luck. The midwives who caught our babies say it never gets old . . .

[Shapley]

Best of luck to you!

[Schmeelkie]

Good luck Monkey! My OB works in an office w/ about 6 other OBs (+a midwife, PAs...) and they also do the share thing. I was sad that my OB did not deliver either of my babies, but happy that neither of the two I didn't really like didn't either. Both OBs (actually the only 2 guys) did a graet job and werevery nice. Of course it really all comes down to the labor nurse as far as I'm concerned... no offense.

[monkeymd2b]

Well, I finally experienced the idiocy of the Oregon Medical Board. I had heard that they were so disorganized that they could lose a forklift sitting on their desks so I guess I shouldn't have been surprised when I was told they didn't have my fingerprints...this is odd because they did get the identification/verification form that went with it...oh and the 30 other pages of the stupid application that were also in there. Those 2 forms were the last 2 in the packet I sent back. I guess I should have stapled the 2 together and put bells on them. My guess would be is that it probably fell on the floor and then got dumped or maybe shuffled off to some other department and trashed. The woman wrote back to me when I asked about it and said that the guy in charge of processing the fingerprints looked and couldn't find it. So I wrote back "tell him to look harder." Then I told them they could pay for another copy from the sheriff's dept but I highly doubt that they would do that so I guess I'll get to pay $15 more dollars for yet another copy of my fingerprints. It's not much considering the cost of other things for this licensing process but I'm not made of money yet (and I hear you actually can't be made of money). Argh!
I thought about reporting them to the BBB but I'm afraid that would make it harder for me to get my license so instead I trash talk to others...I guess I should be impressed that they haven't lost more expensive things like my test scores (those were $50 for a certified copy). Maybe I better get 2 copies when I go there that way I can send 2 copies in 2 separate envelopes so they have a 50% chance of getting one or a 100%chance of losing both. I didn't study statistics but I don't think the normal rules apply here.
Okay, I feel slightly better...I hate them! Okay that feels better too.

[Selma in Sandy Eggo]

Ah, the joys of bureaucracy. You have my sympathy, MMDUAre, because it'll only get older from here. Not better.

On the upside, when you are an older and better funded doctor (if not acutally made of money) you will have a secretary and an insurance clerk who will field much of the bureaucratic trash for you. Get good ones, make friends of them, and rejoice that you got out of the nasty mess of paperwork...

Ranting is always good.

[piqaboo]

Not that you can verify this, but I bet a euro that if you went thru the packet they have on you, you'd find your fingerprints in it, gently stuck to the back of another piece of paper. Sigh.

Oh god no. Dont double submit. You'll confuse everyone and confused beaurocrats just procrastinate.
Buy two of everything, keep one copy to submit when asked.

Good luck, MD2Monkeys2B

[monkeymd2b]

Well, the good news is that the same guy who did my fingerprints happened to be working so he very nicely didn't charge me for 2 copies of my fingerprints. He also remembered me saying that it may happen that I would be back needing another copy. He was going to give me another copy then but it wouldn't have mattered since I needed to submit another verification form with the prints anyway. Now I have another complete set to mail in and then the 3rd set in case they don't "receive" those forms. I did manage to compose myself before calling today to ask what I needed to submit again so that when the guy told me he was the one who couldn't find my prints, I didn't ask him if he was challenged in any way. Okay, I need to head off to work now. I didn't go into the OR with the gyno I'm following because I can only take so much of scrubbing in just to stand around and do nothing during c-sections. I also had to pick up my niece and her mom from the airport. She accidentally touched the glass on the fireplace but no blisters, just a little red so we dealt with that trauma for awhile. She's a little sleep deprived so her mom thinks that's why she's more upset about it.
I get to work overnight in the hospital tonight so I won't get to play with her more until tomorrow afternoon.

[barfle]

Well, the good news is that the same guy who did my fingerprints happened to be working so he very nicely didn't charge me for 2 copies of my fingerprints. He also remembered me saying that it may happen that I would be back needing another copy. He was going to give me another copy then but it wouldn't have mattered since I needed to submit another verification form with the prints anyway. Now I have another complete set to mail in and then the 3rd set in case they don't "receive" those forms. I did manage to compose myself before calling today to ask what I needed to submit again so that when the guy told me he was the one who couldn't find my prints, I didn't ask him if he was challenged in any way.

Don't get me started on how many times American Express "lost" my car rental vouchers.

While they don't get any of my business any more, it's tougher when you're dealing with a gummint bureaucracy.

[monkeymd2b]

Today I got an email that was forwarded to all depts at the OMB and the person in charge of my file said "I know documents don't end up in the wrong departments here but she insists that she sent it in so please look." Wow, I didn't realize they were perfect. Could have fooled me. Since I only had to pay for postage and 30 min of my limited free time, it won't bother me to find out that the day they receive the second set I mailed is the same day they find the first set in some other department. Non e of the other doctors I told my story to were surprised that they lost my prints since almost all of them had some problem with "lost" documents or other idiotic things.
Well, I need a nap, last night was busy since the patients tried to die and I don't like that happening when they want us to keep them alive. And everyone was having heart attacks or not breathing well. Yep, I'm ready to only do clinic medicine and OB. OB provides enough stress in itself.

[dai bread]

Administrators have been scorned for years. When was the last time you saw a male clerk? When was the last time you saw a clerk's job described as such? They're "administrative assistants" or some such fancy name now. The accountant is the "financial controller", as if she (or occasionally he) actually controlled the finances.

Managers are regularly derided. Many people think a highly-qualified medical person should administer a hospital, for instance. In the worst case I heard of, a man with a Doctor of Science degree had to count the fire extinguishers in his building.

The pay reflects the scorn. The result is administrative stuff-ups like the one just described. Or, as has been said for millennia, you pay peanuts, you get monkeys.

[Shapley]

Or, as has been said for millennia, you pay peanuts, you get monkeys.

I would think paying peanuts would get you elephants. Now, if you paid in bananas...

[monkeymd2b]

So the one thing about applying for a job at a private practice that's different than the large groups that I noticed was how vague the small clinics have been - the big groups tell you your base salary right up front and the small ones say "competitive salary." I'm not sure if that was on purpose or just how they work. I do want to make sure I can get a signing bonus since almost all the clinics that either I or others in my class have interviewed at have a bonus between $5000 and $10,000 (one resident negotiated one at $15,000) but I'm not very good at that sort of thing. I don't want to seem all about the money but I would need that money so I can enjoy a month off before starting work in august. I've been in school or training since I was 3 yrs old. I need a little break so I don't go nuts. I at least had the sense to wait until I asked logistical clinic type questions then asked about benefits at the end of the day. I think I learned that one on the residency interview prep process. I feel like interviewing for this type of job has been different than for a regular person job.

[piqaboo]

Get the general concepts of benefits up front, then wait til they make you a verbal offer to start pushing for the higher bonus etc. There are very good books on how to negotiate.

Why would they offer a signing bonus? When I get offered one, its to make up for various difficult to quantitate difficulties in changing jobs (loss of seniority, etc), or because there's a bidding war on, or because of very easy to quantitate losses like annual bonus, stock options or whatever.

You might have to work til you have some vacation time saved up. But best of luck!

[monkeymd2b]

I don't know but all the clinics in portland offer them...or at least all the ones my classmates have interviewed at do. Well, I"m off to another interview.

[monkeymd2b]

Well I finally decided to go with the private practice clinic. The Prov clinic was just not going to budge on letting me do OB, although they did think my idea of at least doing prenatal care was fabulous...didn't seem that revolutionary to me just common sense. It will be an interesting change for me since all through training I have taken care of low income or no insurance patients (the working poor and walking advertisements for a universal health care). So I know all the cheap but effective meds and where the cheapest place in SE portland to get them (costco). This clinic I chose doesn't take medicare or OHP ( oregon medicaid) and so likely they use more brand name stuff. I wonder how many are part of the "worried well."

In other news, I ran 9.5 miles today in preparation for the Shamrock Run next weekend. It's a 15K and the first half is up the huge hill to the medical school. I walked an additional 1/2 mile and I figure I'll walk a bit on the actual race day. Maybe if I trip on the way back down the hill I can roll to the finish line I guess after you cross the finish line they pour beer on you. Gross. I don't like drinking the stuff and I certainly don't want it poured on me. I better bring an extra change of clothes in my car and towels so I don't get yucky beer in my new car. Maybe I"ll drive the old one to the race instead.