• There are a variety of job opportunities for physicians outside of full-time clinical medicine.
• Naomi Lawrence-Reid, MD, teaches physicians how to find these opportunities and build a lucrative career.

Growing up, Naomi Lawrence-Reid, MD, always knew she wanted to be a doctor.

Her career as a physician looks different from what she pictured as a medical student, but she said she wouldn’t have it any other way.

After medical school, Lawrence-Reid completed a pediatrics residency and then began working in a pediatric emergency medicine department.

“I got excellent experience,” Lawrence-Reid told Healio. “You learn to work fast, to work hard, to make decisions quickly about whether a child is sick or not or needs a procedure or intervention. But after about 3 years, I knew that was not my forever career path.”

Lawrence-Reid knew she needed a change, so she left her full-time job and began looking for new ways to use her medical degree, from per diem work to expert witness testimony to medical writing.

Today, Lawrence-Reid runs a company, Doctoring Differently, that teaches physicians how to transition from full-time clinical medicine to a career that better suits their lifestyle and goals. Her curriculum addresses all the important parts of a job that physicians rarely learn about: buying health insurance, malpractice coverage, retirement savings, and networking.

Healio spoke with Lawrence-Reid about her journey and how physicians can begin to build a career that deviates from the typical path.

Healio: Why did you decide to leave clinical medicine? Was it one specific issue or a culmination of multiple issues that led you to resign?

Lawrence-Reid: Like with any breakup or big decision to step away, it’s almost never one thing, right? There are always smaller things, and then the last thing where you decide you can’t ignore the signs anymore and want to leave.

First and foremost, pediatricians are at the bottom of the physician pay scale. My starting salary was $125,000 as a full-time attending physician, and I had almost $200,000 in educational debt living in a high-cost-of-living city. In addition to that, I was working in a tertiary academic center where you’re told when you’re working, when you’re not working, when your vacations are. There was no autonomy. I saw no potential for advancement in this department.

Then I had this shift in November of 2016 when I walked into the small office that they designated for doctors to do their charting — two desks, two chairs, two computers, a tiny little closet. One of the armrests on the chair was broken off, and there were shards of metal sticking up. There was a Post-It note on the computer that said, “Administration is aware, we’re working on a fix.” So, I do my notes with my arm tucked against my torso, I see my patients, write my notes, and go home.

At my next shift, I expected to see a new office chair, but instead, administration had wrapped diapers around the shards of metal on the chair. I stood there for maybe 10 to 20 seconds, and in that moment, I knew that was my value to the department. I knew right in that moment that was not a job I could stay in.

Healio: What happened after you left your full-time position?

Lawrence-Reid: I still only knew about clinical medicine, but I knew that I could work part time, per diem or do locums. Those alternatives are still clinical, still treating patients, but there was not any real discussion or respect for doctors working that way. At the end of training, we started to get calls and texts from locum recruiters and agencies, and I asked my residency leadership about it. They were very dismissive. They said it is not legitimate, it’s not viable and it’s certainly not sustainable.

After quitting my job, I thought, “I did everything right.” I took all the tests, did the residency, passed the boards, did the job I was supposed to do, and I’m unhappy, underpaid and overworked. At that point, I said, “I did everything they told me to do, so I’m going to do what they told me not to do and see what happens.”

Healio: What were all the different opportunities you tried after that?

Lawrence-Reid: It started with becoming a per diem doctor in my community at different clinics that needed help. It ended up feeling full-time, but as a per diem doctor, I still had control. I could decline shifts or take shifts, and that felt so good to me. Then I started doing locums, earning more in a week than I made in a month as a full-time doctor. At that point, I caught the bug.

After those first two things started feeling good — and paying really well — that’s when I thought there must be more. If I saw an opportunity or someone doing something cool on LinkedIn, I slid into their DMs. Almost always, those doctors were happy and free with their knowledge. That is how I discovered I could, as a pediatrician, do veteran disability exams, become an expert medical witness, open a Botox and filler aesthetic practice, do Social Security adjudications, be a medical writer. And I can pick up and put these things down as I want, feel and need. It has turned into such an amazing career that I did not think was possible.

Healio: Now you run your own company, Doctoring Differently. How did that begin?

Lawrence-Reid: Doctoring Differently was one of the pandemic business babies. I started my journey in 2016 not knowing how the world would change, and by 2020, I had legs under me. I’ve talked about the things I do and the different opportunities, but there is so much more to our lived experience as adults: health insurance, healthcare, life insurance, retirement. These come baked into a full-time job. It would be incredibly irresponsible not to have those things, but no one ever told us how to get them. So, it feels extra risky to do something new and different, especially if we don’t have that bolster of social services that are baked in. But by 2020, I figured out how to do those things on my own too.

I wanted to teach doctors in a structured curriculum how to work in these new and different ways, and [about] health insurance, malpractice insurance, social support, creating a physician business entity and how to navigate the space. That began in 2021, and I’ve been teaching doctors ever since.

I think so many of us, especially physicians, want to be spoon-fed every morsel of information. It’s like, “Well, they didn’t teach us, so I guess I’m not supposed to know.” We can know, and we are so smart and capable of learning new things. Our education did not end after residency or fellowship. We can continue to learn, and that’s what Doctoring Differently provides.

Healio: What is the most unexpected type of work physicians can do with their background and training?

Lawrence-Reid: I like to say doctors can do anything they want. But if you’re talking specifically about jobs that doctors can do, I think the most fun one that I’ve discovered is working for the U.S. State Department, where physicians are basically appointed diplomats, given the highest security clearance and go to different parts of the world where there are U.S. Embassies and Consulates, and they are the physician for U.S. government personnel and their families. It’s generally for 2-year stints in different places. I think for now, emergency medicine, family medicine and internal medicine physicians can do that work.

Healio: What is the biggest misconception that people have about jobs outside of full-time clinical medicine?

Lawrence-Reid: That they are saturated. That they are insecure. A lot of doctors pre-fail. They tell themselves it won’t work, and that gives them permission to stay where they are.

The other is that there’s a rule that you have to stay in full-time clinical medicine. Doctors are very obedient, rule-following people, and that is a good thing until it comes to this point that we’re talking about, where it feels like breaking a rule to leave. It turns out there are no rules, and we can do whatever we want.

Finally, I think it’s a feeling that we can’t come back. “If I do something else, I’ll be excommunicated.” That’s not true either.

Healio: What advice do you have for physicians who are looking for something different but are hesitant to leave their position?

Lawrence-Reid: I hear the word “leap” all the time. We love to say, “taking a leap.” To those doctors, I say, “Let’s not imagine a leap. Let’s imagine it is a step.”

A lot of doctors, we have a very high tolerance for pain and suffering. Residency is very hard. We know how to work hard under terrible conditions. So, for a doctor who is considering it, follow accounts on social media where you see doctors who are encouraging and promoting an alternative way of working, watch them not fail and believe you have everything you need. You don’t need another fellowship. You don’t need another degree. You have everything you need to make a step and a change.

Start to imagine turning down the volume on your full-time clinical job. Could you go from 1.0 FTE to 0.75 or 0.51? It starts with turning down these full-time jobs that sap our energy and, ergo, our creativity, so we have the capacity to imagine a new career, a new life.

Naomi Lawrence-Reid, MD, can be reached through her website or LinkedIn. You can also find her on Instagram (@doctoringdifferently) and X (@docdifferently).