#22 Job Security in Medicine is a Myth

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Hey everyone, I hope you've had a great week. Before we get started, I wanted to start by announcing that, yes, we are opening up the next class of our signature course, Passive Real Estate Academy, coming up on August 2nd. I mean, people have been asking about this for the last few months and we finally had a chance to make sure we had it in the right shape to bring it out to you folks. I mean, we made a lot of adjustments in terms of upgrades based on feedback. For those who don't know what this course is all about, it's all about getting you to a place of confidence in terms of investing in passive and private real estate investments in four weeks. Now, what those investments are passive real estate investments, those can be things called syndications or funds. If you've been listening to this podcast, I've been talking all about them in the past, but it's a way for physicians to really leverage the capital and income that they make as a physician and invest passively in some way to create some passive income on the side. It's a way to get involved investing in real estate without being a landlord. And there are so many deals out there, you've probably heard about them all over the place from friends, from family, from colleagues. But how do you know you're making good investment? You know, nobody teaches you these things. And over just years of trial and error, just personally investing hundreds of thousands of dollars myself in these type of investments, I made a lot of mistakes, learned a lot of good things as well. And so I share all those tips and tricks and really techniques in the course to really accelerate your learning to make sure you don't make those same mistakes, but really come up with a strategy and understand how to really look at these investments and make a good decision at the end of the day. So if you're interested. Well, now that you're listening to this podcast, we're going to be opening up a special waitlist sale for those who are ready to kind of take action. If you go to passiveincomemd.com course, passiveincomemd.com Course, there's an opportunity for you to join the waitlist. We're going to open up sales for a couple days before the actual sale. So on the 31st and people who do so and are ready to take action, they're able to get in at nice discount. But either way, take a look if you're interested. It's a great opportunity for you to really get a step up and, you know, take years of learning and really squash it into four weeks. So I'm really excited for it. Thanks for listening. Let's get to the material. Enjoy. So I know it's a crazy time, everyone. Obviously, in different parts of the country, there are people feeling it different ways. Physicians are feeling it in different ways. If there ever was a time where people felt that job security in medicine wasn't a thing or wasn't really secure and solid, it's now. I can't tell you how many people that I've met and talked to in our Facebook groups and personally, physicians that have been furloughed actually let go. Their groups were replaced. It's happening all over the place right now. And it's funny because I wrote an article a couple years ago called Job Security in Medicine is a Myth. And I remember when I released that, I got so many comments back to me saying, you know, you must be crazy. I mean, if there's one place that's safe, it's in medicine. We are physicians. We cannot be replaced. Healthcare will always be a necessity. And so really, there's a secure job can be. It's in medicine and being a physician. And so when I used to talk about job security, medicine, the point of all this, let's be honest, it was to say, hey, you need to not put all your eggs in one basket and make sure that you have other sources of income, because anything happened at any time. Now, the reason I used to say this was because of my own experience. I mean, when I felt like, you know, a couple years into practice, I thought that my job was secure, my partnership track was secure, and I was going to be making a certain income, promised a certain schedule and shifts and these kinds of things, and it didn't materialize that way. And I realized that there are humans, there are people making decisions above you, and so you're not actually totally in control. And of course, I've learned since then that it's not just, you know, your immediate bosses, but it's also society. It's regulations, it's government. And there's so many things and winds of change that are coming, and these are things that you cannot control. And so I think a lot of people are actually seeing that now, especially with everything happening with COVID pandemic economics changing and yeah, I mean, I can't say it's strong enough. Job security in medicine is not necessarily true. It can be a myth for a lot of people. And we all know that medicine has changed quite a bit now. My father was a physician. I don't know how many of you have physician family members. And when you talk about medicine today versus when they were in medicine, it seems like a totally different story that you're getting in terms of job satisfaction, terms of income security, in terms of really control of how you can practice. You know, these things are totally different today. And it's kind of sad to see that these things have happened. I mean, I think there have been a lot of great things that have happened in medicine in terms of advances, technology breakthroughs and things like that. But again, there have been some negatives and downsides as well. So for anybody who says medicine is exactly today than it was 20, 30 years ago, I definitely would be willing to challenge you on that. And so I think when it comes to at least the financial part, that's changed dramatically as well, too. As you know, physicians nowadays come out with huge amount of student debt and the ratio in terms of like how much you owe in terms of student loan debt versus how much you make and the cost of living, especially in some of the areas that people are living in. I mean, I live in Los Angeles, which is a very high cost of living area. I mean, the numbers don't work out in your favor as much as they used to. And so I know a lot of physicians, and I've talked about in the past that live paycheck to paycheck that are stressed from a month to month figuring out whether they can meet their expenses, they can support their lifestyle. And I get it. A lot of people say, look, just move. But sometimes it's not that easy, especially if your community, if your family is there, and that's where you want to raise your children and family. So it's not that easy to move. Now, when we think about this whole issue with job security and medicine and things have changed. I've got a couple reasons why I really think that it's absolutely a myth and why times are changing. And I'd love to see if you agree and if you have some more points for me. But number one, you know, obviously physicians today are getting replaced by non physicians. We all know that. You know, I'll be honest, there's probably a certain amount of pride did you carry by being a physician. I mean, it definitely wasn't easy getting here and you spent so much time and money on your degree, on all those hours of training, and you expect it to be kind of at the top of the ladder. And I think that probably most of us felt like we could not be replaced. And especially with the physician shortage, we felt like, hey, there's a lot of demand on our side. And of course over time, prices in terms of wage because of demand and the supply being low, that, you know, as physicians, you know, we'd be either more in demand, our salaries would go up. But unfortunately that hasn't been the case. Society medicine in general, what they've done is to replace with the physician shortage. They've learned to elevate others to the physician type role. But again, whether you believe, whether it's right or wrong, it's reality. Physicians are being replaced. I had friends whose groups of physicians have been totally replaced by physician and so called physician extenders. And it's happening whether you like it or not. And to be honest, it could happen anytime. I've had friends who've been told that private equity has bought their groups out and they're being replaced in a few short weeks. And that's life and reality. So you have to be prepared for that. Number two, one of the reasons why job security is a myth is that you can be replaced by other physicians. I mean, who's to say that we're not our own individual brands anymore? We're kind of in a pool of just physicians, physician providers, many of us work on shifts and we can be replaced at any time. As you go to like academic institutions or even some of these private institutions, they focus more on building their own brands now as a health system versus building up you as a particular physician. And the reason I think that they do this in a lot of ways is that physicians can then be swapped in and out. But people are basically making decisions in terms of patients based on the healthcare reputation, not on the particular physician. So unfortunately, any leverage that we had as physicians, you know, once being unique and a powerful brand, it's gone. And so now you've heard it. If you don't like to deal with the hospital, then you can take it and you can leave. Especially with everything happening with COVID people are asked to take these major pay cuts and you know, obviously we saw how administration wasn't really partaking in those pay cuts as well, but they were asking physicians to do so. And when those physicians weren't agreeable to it, yeah, they were like, oh, and you've seen that. And so unfortunately they know that they can get another physician in there or a physician extender like we talked about. So that's the sad reality today. Now, I don't know if you've been keeping up with news and the platform that a certain candidate, Andrew Yang, had taken in terms of when he was trying to run for the Democratic presidential candidate. He talked a lot about automation and how automation was taking, has taken and will take so many of the jobs in our current society and in a few short years. I mean, I think he was talking mostly about, you know, truck drivers, retail folks, fast food front people and how those jobs are getting taken over by automation and how that will drastically change the economy. Now I think as physicians we tend to think there's no way that we could be replaced by automation and technology. However, I totally think that's false. You're starting to see it already. You are seeing how AI, especially when it comes to reading films, I mean that's. That technology is increasing significantly. Can that replace some of the radiology workforce? It's quite possible. Anesthesiologists, I'm an anesthesiologist. You've seen how they've tried to create machines that have taken place of a lot of physicians. I know that that did not materialize, but that possibility is there. Unfortunately, a lot of physicians have been reduced to basically algorithm followers. So why can't AI, Especially with the increase in terms of telemedicine and now we're being just replaced by screens and the face to face contact isn't there as much. Why couldn't we be replaced by AI To a degree. And to be honest, I think we have to be concerned that that's a real possibility. Let me give you an example. Recently my daughter, she had a little bit of a skin infection, some cellulitis on her arm, and we weren't able to really see a dermatologist during this time. And so I decided to use a telemedicine company for the first time and everything was just done over chat. And I could see it was a basic run of the mill type situation, but I could see how there's some element of artificial intelligence could be inserted there where a physician, maybe they just have a final check. But a lot of that discussion and that sort of thing could have been done by an artificial intelligence chatbot and I wouldn't have even known. And I know that it's definitely possible and that's something that we may fall victim to. So you've got to be careful of that. Now the next point is that, you know, we're always have to watch our back for lawsuits. Obviously, we are living in a very litigious environment in society. And probably many of you have known a physician that has been in a significant lawsuit and it's threatened their livelihood and their career. Now I've been called in for depositions for. Since I'm an anesthesiologist, I tend to be in certain rooms and I've been called in for physicians who I know that did a fantastic job to the best of their abilities, but sometimes outcomes are unpredictable. And so because of that, you know, their decision making was called into question. Possibility of possible licensure and that sort of thing was a possibility. And it's crazy to me to see how many years of training, of hard work can be thrown away over one poor outcome, regardless of, again, whether they did their best job to the best of their ability as possible. You know, because of that, I've seen how fragile, you know, our careers and our licenses are, and I don't know if you've seen the same. And if that isn't enough, obviously there's always a chance for disability. I mean, I've seen, you know, my job, I consider it very technical and high skilled. I do a lot of epidurals and spinals and that's what makes me what I am. That's why I'm marketable and that's my skill. But I could see how one injury could really put that into jeopardy. I mean, I've known physicians, even when I was up in training, I've known physicians that had accidents outside of medicine that caused a significant disability. And of course, hopefully everyone here that's listening to this has very robust disability insurance. But they were not able to practice in the same way. And it totally changed their economic outcome. And that can happen at any time. I mean, we're human, we're out there interacting in the world, things happen. And hopefully, knock on wood, this doesn't happen to me, it doesn't happen to anybody listening to this, but that's definitely a possibility. And so you have to account for that. So by nature, I'm a pretty optimistic guy, but I'm also a realistic. And there's a couple ways that you can look at all of this. When you come to the realization that job security is a myth, that it's pretty tenuous, it's actually more fragile than you think in terms of your career. You can look at it and you could get depressed if you wanted to, you can get upset, you can get angry even. But I think that the more productive thing to do that I've done, that I've been working on constantly and I hope that everyone else can do is figure out, hey, now that I see this, what can I do to protect myself? Because we all have goals in life, we all have families that we're trying to protect. We can complain and we can mourn the loss of the golden age of medicine, but that's not really going to get us anywhere. We've got to figure out how to take this and prepare for it so that no matter what happens, we're still able to have the life and the career that we want. In my opinion, the best way to do that is, is to create income outside of medicine, hopefully passive income stuff that you're able to take your hard earned capital from medicine and be able to funnel it into something that creates income on the side for you while you're sleeping, while you're working in medicine, while you're shaping your life as you want it to be. The goal should be that income is coming up and hopefully it will replace your current income in medicine so that you can really practice however you want on your own terms. What I call make it a hobby, what I sometimes say in terms of medicine is to make it a hobby. Once you're in that position, it doesn't matter what happens in medicine, doesn't matter if your job security is a myth, it doesn't matter if regulation changes, doesn't matter if you're working in conditions that you're not happy about, because you can change it anytime. Let's be honest, most of us don't change the situation we're in when it comes to our job. It's because of financial security. And, and so when that is handled through other streams of income, then you can really choose your ideal life and career. Let me tell you, it's absolutely possible, if anything, if any of you are part of the leverage and growth summit that we had recently. There's so many physicians doing things outside of medicine while still practicing medicine and able to create financial security and able to really thrive and do things that they're passionate about while still remaining a doctor. I mean, I think the key to really surviving this really unknown future out there is to be flexible, to be resourceful, to be able to adapt to changes, to invest well, be proactive, obviously be humble, know that, you know, there's so much more to learn out there and really just take a hold and just say, I am no longer going to be captive to medicine when it comes to finances and I'm going to create my own financial security. Let me know if you think the same. I would love to hear your input. Definitely put it in the comments in our show notes on the blog. Otherwise, I would love to hear more about it on our Facebook group Passive Income Knocks. Have a great week. Stay safe and take care.

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