Tuesday, April 19, 2016

US programs for physicians reentering clinical practice.

I’ve been out of clinical practice for about 17 years. On the other hand I have a current license and I did well on my board exams a few months ago. I believe I could do above average work, but I’d want a few months of supervision. I can think of a few ways to manage this, including designing a mini-curriculum and following the post-employment path of a fresh physician assistant. 

A formal program for physician reentry would be interesting, but there aren’t any in Minnesota. Which sort of suggests we don’t have a serious shortage of primary care docs. We do have some local fellowships that might be interesting reentry paths, but they currently fill well with post-residency candidates.

I haven’t decided to pursue this direction, but at a recent meeting I asked the Minnesota Medical Association’s president what he knew of. Their policy counsel made up a short list, and as I’ve not seen it online I’ll share it here:

There’s a longer list in a Federation of State Medical Boards PDF, many of the programs deal with “ethics”, “boundaries”, “disruptive behavior”, prescribing controlled substances, and “anger management”, but a few simply focus on “reentry” (though, on visiting the web sites, even they seem mostly to deal with what we call “disciplinary issues”). The Cedars-Sinai program seems closest, but it’s primarily focused on hospital privileges.

I haven’t decided to go down this path, but it’s helpful to know the landscape.

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