“I left clinical medicine behind me.”

It still feels strange writing those words out, but I did, and it’s getting easier to own up to it by the minute.

Someone asked about it in a physician Facebook group the other day. She had seen the alternative options discussed; things like expert witness work, a role at pharma/biotech, or utilization management review.

But she hadn’t heard of other options. And was wondering if anyone had gone there.

So I ‘spoke’ up. I’d gone there. And I live to tell about it.

I had took a pretty non-standard path. I decided to literally start from scratch.

It started out as a stint being a SAHM (that’s an acronym for Stay at Home Mom), with my thinking I’d just take some time off to reconnect with “the kids” (I laugh at the sound of that; adding “the” in front of those words makes it sound like they’re a special kind of entity. Like a group of spies..). But I ended up in shock when, having stepped away from the craziness of medicine, I realized that… there actually was so much to life I didn’t know about. So much I hadn’t experimented with. So much that made me happy. And that I was skilled at.

I tried to re-assimilate, and I actually did well for a few years, getting back into the clinical-practice saddle and building up a patient load in the traditional primary care setting of today, working for a large health system. But I also vowed to never stop experimenting on the side.

I just couldn’t stop playing around with the “new set of glasses” I had found and donned: the ones that made me newly aware that there’s so much more out there for me.

There’s a lot that’s happened in between. I won’t go into it here, in this short article. But at this point, I’m building a business from the ground up and learning to become an effective entrepreneur in the digital age in which we live. I’m hoping to help redefine what an MD can actually do for us and to pave the way for those of us who are convinced we can make a difference in more ways than just the physical space, behind closed doors.