LEAVING RESIDENCY™
At Skilled Wound Care many of our most successful providers have left their surgical residency programs or have left hospital based practices to take an out of the box wound care career path. SWC physicians seek to perform patient-saving care, have work-life balance, and avoid hospital bureaucracy. They are able to make a difference in patient lives without sacrificing their own.
In order to see if you are in a state where you can obtain your medical license with the number of current residency years you have completed, please see our state by state map with requirements here:
According to a 2018 JAMA study, over 7% of second-year residents regret their specialty choice. Specialties with the highest reported levels of regret include pathology (32.7%), anesthesiology (20.6%), general surgery (19.1%), neurology (17.4%), and psychiatry (16.9%). The good news? You have the ability to pivot and pursue another career path more aligned with your goals and aspirations.
One of the most difficult decisions a medical student or physician in training can make is choosing a specific medical specialty. Making this decision means a great deal of sacrifice on both a professional and personal level. For instance, choosing a surgical subspecialty means sacrificing much of your personal time during your residency years in order to complete the program. There are both written and oral tests that need to be completed in order to obtain Board Certification. And without Board Certification it is almost impossible to practice a surgical specialty within a hospital.
Many medical students and physicians in training, residency or fellowship, also may not realize the realities of the work requirements for these specialties long term. The long term commitments may mean night call, weekend call, and certain administrative duties. Now more than ever, patient visits and procedures require detailed documentation of every encounter. Hospitals have created more and more rules that can impact how a physician practices medicine, restricting what physicians may and may not do. All of these requirements have made medical residents, physicians in training, and board certified physicians think twice about staying in the field of medicine.
However, for many resident physicians, Not Finishing Residency™ and leaving is a very difficult decision to make. Leaving Residency™ may be a scary prospect with not being board certified and the potential impact on loss of job opportunities.
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Wound healing is one of the most important areas of medicine; However, patients with wounds suffer from:
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Pain and discomfort
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Loss of employment
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Difficulties in performing simple activities of daily living
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Depression: psychological, emotional, and social implications
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Lack of resources needed for treatment
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Non-Compliance to care
Healing wounds is both an art and a science. It takes a great deal of dedication and perseverance from nurses, patients and physicians working together to achieve wound healing. It is also a procedural field for the physicians requiring surgical debridements to achieve a clean wound and prevent infection, sepsis, amputation, deterioration, and even death. 60,000 patients die every year from a pressure injury. 25% of diabetic patients will develop a foot wound within their lifetime. Skilled Wound Care physicians are able to provide life-saving care and maintain the freedom to practice medicine on their own terms, with the work-life balance they desire.
Wound care physicians typically work set, regular hours without nights, holidays, or weekends and are never on call. They have a wonderful work-life balance with ample free time to spend with loved ones and also have high professional satisfaction levels.
