Episode 515: Career Development and Mentorship with Dr. Camille Palma

So I am in a similar position where I am also transitioning to my third job in January.

So we can have a good conversation about this.

Cause I think, so we talk about this a lot with trainees and fellows is, you know, we always quote the numbers.

We're like, look, 50% of doctors leave their first job after five years.

And then we say, well, in retina, maybe more.

I was talking to our residents about this a couple of weeks ago.

And I think it's like one of those things that's actually quite difficult for it's like sympathy versus empathy.

It's like very difficult to understand it until you're in it.

Right.

So, like, I think it's first of all, there's a lot of people who are like, well, that's you.

That's not going to be me, which, again, is true for some of them.

They may stay at their job and you want them to stay ideally their job for 30 or 40 years.

There's a percentage of them who are listening to you and understanding, but don't quite understand.

And I think it's because it's so hard to anticipate a few things, right? It's so hard to anticipate your future needs as an individual and as a family, once you start a family, if you have a family, a spouse, kids, etc., If you have extended family, if you're sandwich generation, where you have family on either side you have to take care of, that becomes complicated.

Jobs change, leadership changes, job structures change.

And I think it's so hard to communicate that in a way because thinking people put such pressure, it is an important decision.

And a lot of people say the more you transition jobs, read any finance experts, they're like, well, one house, one spouse, one job.

But realistically, that one job thing doesn't happen for doctors a lot of the time.

And I don't know what your thoughts are and what do you tell people about that, right? Because I think probably historically, maybe 20 years ago, 30 years ago, it was viewed as maybe flaky for a doctor to change jobs.

That's not true for other disciplines that have high worth professionals, right? But for medicine, for whatever reason, it was sort of the label.

And maybe it came more from ivory tower academic places and less on the private side.

But even on the private side, people are like, yeah, you're here to be a partner.

You're going to be here forever.

What do you sort of tell if you're working with residents and fellows about that job decision and also how do you know when it's the right time to change a job?

I think that's a really, really great question because one, I think the landscape of retina has changed.