Physician Contracts: Negotiating your first contract – part I

As residents, we enjoy a rather sheltered life. We work hard, read digest and debate cutting edge medical research and studies, and try to do a darn good job taking care of patients. The one thing we don’t do? Learn the business of medicine. While some residents will go on to continue in academia, the majority will emerge to engage in one or the other form of private practice. All these endeavors involve a crucial legal document – the contract, made between the employer and the prospective employee i.e. You! The employer can be a hospital, a private group or even a solo practitioner trying to hire a partner. In this post, we share our thoughts about negotiating your first physician contract.

While this post will ramble on, perhaps in multiple parts, there are two extremely important observations that need to be put out right now to emphasize their importance: (more…)

When to start looking for J1 waiver job

Anyone on a J1 visa has this simple question…when should I start looking for a J1 waiver job?

In general, the search for J1 waiver follows the timeframe similar to fellowship search. If you are in a 3-year residency (or fellowship) program, you should start looking as soon as you enter year 2. You should aim to line up interviews by the middle of year 2 which would translate to October-February period of year 2. Try to seal the deal (i.e.) sign the contract by June at the latest – i.e. end of year 2.

The whole point of this exercise is to have your J1 waiver application packet ready to be filed by August. In case you missed it, the packet needs to be ready to be filed by August.

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How to find J1 waiver jobs

How to find a J1 waiver job!!! This can be a lengthy topic to deal with, so we’ll break it up into short manageable segments. This following post is the first such post. The plan is to summarize everything in the final post sometime in the future. But we’re quite well known to not always stick to the plan! Onward, however…

Finding a J1 waiver job can be a long drawn out affair. On the other hand, it can be a very quick experience. It all depends on what your requirements from the waiver job are. It also depends on luck, of course.

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