Do You Feel Like You Wasted All That Training?

6. How did your mentor help you?

Having a career transition mentor was the most important factor that enabled me to complete the process. 

My brother-in-law’s father is a physician who left his residency training to start an emergency room physician staffing company. He enjoyed personal and financial success through the growth and sale of the company.  Since that time he has successfully started and managed other companies, and has been involved in several philanthropic activities. 

He was well aware of my frustration with clinical practice from several years of discussing the topic, and was very eager to help when I decided to explore alternative options.  He recommended that we meet every other week at a point approximately halfway between our homes in Bethlehem and Philadelphia.  For the next two years, we met at a restaurant to discuss my desired career transition.  

At first I recounted a litany of reasons why I wanted to leave my current job, without a goal in sight.  This was a particularly emotional time for me, because I felt trapped in a dead end – as though all of my hard work, studying and training, was wasted.  Worst of all, I did not see a way out.  During the first several meetings, my mentor convinced me of three beliefs necessary to begin the transition process: 1) that there were non-clinical jobs requiring my skills, 2) that I could fill in the remaining gaps in my skills and transfer them to such a job, and 3) that I could overcome the likely financial challenge associated with such a transition. 

The fourth belief had to come from within – I had to believe in myself.  I think if that was not the case, I would have given up many times along the way.

We discussed the realities that I had to accept.  This transition was not going to be easy or fast.  I would have to be as dedicated to this process as I was to becoming a physician many years earlier.  I also had to be willing to begin at the bottom of the totem pole again.  That was a reality that would affect me psychologically and financially.

My mentor provided a structure to the career transition process, which consisted of five phases: introspection, exploration, preparation, and acquisition, and transition.  We worked through this sequence methodically, with homework assignments that I completed between meetings.  Over time we honed in on a target industry and position while walking through the steps necessary to get there. Many dinners later, I made an extremely rewarding career transition.  I realize how fortunate I was to have guidance through that process and understand that most people do not have access to such an advisor.

Hopefully this book will help provide a reasonable surrogate for a mentor and an organized approach to non-clinical career path exploration.  In my opinion, however, there is no true substitute for the guidance gained from two-way discussion with a mentor.