Originally posted by Dusn
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i'd be curious to hear your response to the OP... are you happy with your choice of speciality?
i am early career retina surgeon also (3rd year attending, in private practice), and i could not be happier so far with my current speciality and perhaps more importantly my job. medium sized retina only group in small/rural semi-coastal town, not particularly desirable/competitive area, but good for me and my husband. physician run practice, two of the partners make all the business decisions but they are very fair and frankly very good at running a business. we take very good care of patients, but things are maximized for physicians benefit (i.e. great work life balance). 4 days of work per week. work very hard when in clinic, seeing 50-70 patients per day, usually work from 8 to 4 or 5. one weekend of call every month, but not bad at all. income 500-700k per year so far... fingers crossed for partnership in a year, and hopefully decent increase in income then.
i think i just got really luck with this job. just dumb luck. being an attending has been much more enjoyable than i expected. i am a pretty negative/pessimistic/worrying person, and i was (and still am!) very worried about our group getting bought out by PE or a hospital (even though all signs point to that not being an issue). i wish i could just relax and enjoy my current set up without stressing for the future.
in training i was pretty pragmatic when picking ophtho then retina... i liked surgery a fair bit, i liked clinic a fair bit, preferred outpatient... found ophtho and retina to be fairly interesting, seemed like good work-life balance and stable field... now i'm finding myself genuinely surprised how much i like this stuff. it's cool being a specialist in a relatively obscure but necessary field, where what i say pretty much goes.
i worry that i walked into a pretty ideal setup right away, and if things were to become less ideal (like most other physician and retina jobs), i would be pretty unhappy.
fingers crossed but so far so good.
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