"Maybe 60 or 70 percent of clinicians want to move to administration." Ophthalmologist Lu Lin said.
For the first three years of his career as a doctor, he was eager to move to an administrative position. For him, the clinical practice has the disadvantages of "not being able to leave work on time", "no weekends" and "working night shifts", while the administrative position is much easier and has a lot of income. "Frankly, the vast majority of doctors still see medicine as a profession rather than a power generator out of love," he said.
can't be transferred to administration, Lu Lin said that the main reason is that there is no opportunity, "Administration is a turnip and a pit, so many people are waiting". And the colleagues who have successfully transferred to administrative positions seem to have become the most envious objects of those around them.
Therefore, Lilac Garden invited three doctors who have moved from clinical to administrative positions to share their truest feelings.
I still want to go back to the clinic in the future
Lu Feifei, 40 years old, is the former deputy chief physician of the Department of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, and is now a quality control administrator
I went to a tertiary hospital in Hunan in 2007, and it has been 16 years. My husband is also from our hospital, he is a cardiologist, and we are both deputy senior executives. In October last year, I moved to the administrative side.
My son is 14 years old, and I have barely cooked a meal for him in the past ten years, and I haven't taken him out on weekends. Maybe it's because our department is too tired, and the turnover rate of doctors is also very high, everyone comes and goes, and there are basically 4 fixed doctors, and everyone has to manage seventy or eighty beds together. On average, I work 10 24-hour night shifts a month, and the rest of the time I have to go out to the clinic.
Image source: Picture Worm Creative
Three or four years ago, I was promoted to the rank of deputy senior officer, and I thought I would no longer be on the front line. But there are still too few people, and the workload is no different from before. Seeing that my child is about to enter junior high school, I think I need more personal time to tutor him in his studies.
At first, I wanted to lead a team in a lower-level hospital because I was reluctant to give up my major. I interviewed a second-class interview, and I passed, so I resigned with the dean, but he was unwilling to let me go because of the establishment problem. At this time, there was a vacancy in the quality control office, and he asked me to do it.
After I moved to administration, I worked a lot less overtime, and I was relieved. I finally have weekends and can take my children out to play, and although my salary is one or two thousand less than when I was in the clinic, I am also very satisfied. The administrative work is not difficult, but it is a little miscellaneous, and it will not lose a lot of hair as in the clinic before.
Recently, we've been working on the content of the review, and I'm still learning from other colleagues. But after so many years in the respiratory department, I really don't want to give up, and I am still teaching at the university. When my child goes to high school and has the consciousness to learn, I think I will still return to the clinic.
I regret not coming to the administration sooner
Chen Yu, 30 years old, is a former attending physician in gynecology and a medical insurance administrator
When I work in the clinic, the most painful thing for me is that there are patients looking for things almost every day. Some patients need treatment, I prescribe her medicine, and she says I want to make her money; Some patients are fine, I just ask her to go back and observe, and she says I'm not responsible. A lot of patients scolded me at the door of the clinic, no one came to help me, I couldn't talk back, and I had to continue to see other patients, which was really painful.
At that time, I wanted to change jobs, and my mood has been going back and forth. I want to stay in the clinic for a while, after all, I have invested so many years of study; After a while, I felt that I couldn't do it for a day. In the end, the straw that broke me was that the hospital launched a special gynecology clinic - every day and all day outpatient clinic, and I was the only doctor on call.
Image source: Picture Worm Creative
I submitted my resignation to the hospital leaders and went to other hospitals for interviews, and my goal was clear, I was going to be an administrative post. I used to be in a second-class obstetrics and gynecology hospital, but the administrative position was very popular with people with clinical backgrounds, so now I have gone to the third-class hospital, and the interview went very well.
Compared with before, my monthly salary has decreased by three or four thousand yuan, but I am also content, because I can leave work on time every day, and I have more time at my disposal, and I can do some things that I like but didn't have time to do before. I am mainly responsible for medical insurance, handling medical insurance calculations, consultations, etc., although I still need to contact patients, but the people here are generally very qualified. The clinical work is really too difficult, and even if it is difficult now, it can be solved.
I don't regret changing jobs, the only moment I regret every month is when I get paid, and I'm usually happy. After that, I hope to develop well on the administrative road and find opportunities to be promoted.
I didn't know about administrative work before, and I felt that working 9 to 5 was easy, but now it's not
Zuo Huang, 40 years old, is a former emergency surgical burn surgeon
He is currently the Director of the Medical Information Management Office of the First Affiliated Hospital of Xi'an Jiaotong University School of Medicine
I was the first student of Xi'an Jiaotong University and Xi'an Medical College, and I was transferred to the Department of Clinical Medicine, and I was very reluctant to clinical medicine, so I took a second degree (management) in the school. The first department I rotated to was the emergency department, and I had a sense of responsibility to save lives, help the wounded, treat the sick and save people, but the intensity of working at 8 o'clock ~ 20 o'clock for 12 hours was really too great.
During the November Golden Week holiday in 2006, the doctor asked me to change classes (I am a native of Xi'an) and said that I wanted to go back to my hometown for a few more days, and I agreed, so I took 4 consecutive 24-hour shifts. After the holiday, the dean came to me, "I heard that you still have a management background and carry out medical management work in Shaanxi Province, are you interested in participating?" As soon as I heard it, it seemed like I had grabbed a life-saving straw, so I quickly agreed.
After that, I started to run between the medical department and the emergency department, and as I got more and more administrative tasks, I gradually began to leave the clinic until 2008, when I did not have surgery at all. At first, I served as the secretary to the president of the hospital office, accompanied the examination, and later transferred to the medical department to manage medical disputes for three years, as the director of the quality control office, and so on.
Our hospital is a relatively well-known tertiary hospital, with many patients and a doctor's income is also very good, and the income when I am a front-line doctor is 5 times that of the administration. I just felt very new when I was transferred to an administrative position, but after a long time, especially when I was in charge of doctor-patient disputes, the fierce conflict almost collapsed the former ideal, and I said that I would treat the disease and save people, but I faced endless quarrels every day, and I had to consider the problem from the dual position of the hospital and the patient, and I once felt that I had been jumping from different perspectives, which was very divided and painful. In addition, clinical work is more fulfilling, and the income is higher than that of administration, so I have told the dean many times that I want to go back to clinical work.
Image source: Picture Worm Creative
It was not until 2014 that I came into contact with the operation management and refined management of the hospital, and found that the professional manager path of the hospital is a new career path, which is really the core of the transformation from extensive management to refined operation management of the hospital. That's when I really found the direction of administrative development, and it felt like a new door was opened.
The hospital sent me to West China and other hospitals to study, and then I introduced the system into our hospital. Under this system, doctors only need to concentrate on seeing patients, while the management of the hospital leaves the rest to keep the hospital running well. Because doctors are the core of the hospital, it is they who attract patients, and administration, logistics, and nursing have the opportunity to serve patients, so we must serve doctors well.
In the past, when I was in the emergency clinical position, I felt that the administrative teacher transferred the documents, managed us, and sat in the office blowing the air conditioner. When I transferred to administration, I found that it was not easy for administrative positions to do things well. Of course, for doctors who don't want to work night shifts and want to be more relaxed, it is possible to take a break from their administrative positions.
At present, the problem of uneven administrative staff is still very prominent, because the proportion of administrative staffing in China's hospitals is relatively low, and too many emergency affairs are given, and the boundaries of hospital management responsibilities and rights are not clear, so for a period of time I was also very hard in administration, and I repeatedly wondered why I did so many things, but I still didn't understand administration? Later, I realized that we did not start from the perspective of the needs of clinical teachers.
Today, I still have a heart that wants to return to the clinic, but it is unlikely that I will go back, my former students are also taking students, and the titles and professional level of clinical colleagues younger than me have far surpassed me, and they can do the surgery beautifully. Doctors must have a much longer career than many administrative positions, and they still have a long way to go.
My advice to young doctors who want to move to an administrative position is not to give up completely, just like you once learned to ride a bicycle and can still ride it whenever you want. The ability will always grow on the body, and I will be useful by nature.
From the Lilac Garden