Practicing Medicine As An Occupational Medicine Doctor
If you are going to be versatile then it’s good to get some experience in occupational medicine. Some medical groups have a strong presence in this and so will hire only occ med docs. However, plenty of them will hire docs with solid experience in this field without the credentialing.
By October of my 2nd year in residency I got my medical license and hooked up with Tracy Zweig who go me a gig at a large urgent care which did a ton of occ med work. I learned the ropes quickly and the owner gave me as many shifts as I wanted, it was a great working relationship. I would show up on a Friday and they would put a $1,100 check in my hand as soon as I walked through the doors.
Tracy Zweig is a phenomenal locum tenens agency for California. She works with you directly and has solid staff. I got a lot of other great gigs through Tracy.
However, because of this experience at this one particular urgent care two huge opportunities opened up for me later on. Granted, I didn’t pursue either but the fact that they were available allowed me better bargaining power.
The first was a medical group that actually ended up buying that first urgent care that I cut my teeth on. They offered me a more permanent gig doing only occ med work even though all their docs had done occ med fellowships. The second opportunity was at my current medical group back in 2011. The urgent care was going through some undesirable changes so I reached out to occupational medicine and they started having me do shifts with them and after a few shifts they offered me a position.
In Summary
If you get the opportunity, practice a little occupational medicine. It’s not as hard as it seems and in the current work environment there are a lot of urgent cares trying to get a piece of the occ health pie so they are willing to hire you if you have adequate experience and competence.