Your Local Medical Community
One piece of training many residents receive little of is dealing with the medical community. During training, we have significant exposure to a variety of medical practitioners, including assistants, nurses, various technicians, and physicians, among others. Much of our training is spent in subordinate positions to many of these folks. For those of you who might disagree, I’ll ask you to count how many of your attendings you call by their first name. Very few, I’ll bet. So, what happens when we graduate and enter the medical community as a colleague of equal standing? For many of us, this is a difficult transition to make, but one with significant practice building advantages. For podiatric medicine, a referral-based specialty, our relationship with the medical community is very important.
Benefits of the Medical Community
Clearly, being a member of a larger medical community is advantageous. The obvious advantage is the sizeable referral pool. These physicians, physical therapists, nurses, etc provide the specialist with the patient base necessary to a successfully practice. Additionally, they themselves may be your patients. It’s very common, for example, for a podiatric physician to be the treating specialist for their local hospital. They also have family and friends, broadening that network of potential referrals.
Perhaps the greatest advantage, though, is the intellectual stimulation of your medical community. When I was first in practice, I was somewhat isolated in the sense that I was in an isolated private practice without an immediately accessible medical community. The only interaction I had with the community at large was when I went to the hospital for consultations and surgery. At Western University, I’m constantly interacting with the medical community, providing me both intellectual as well as social benefits.
Practice building is really about building relationships. Being an integral member of your local medical community will be both monetarily, intellectually, and socially beneficial. Good luck with your practice building efforts.
Keep writing in with your thoughts and comments. Better yet, post them in our eTalk forum.
Best wishes.
Jarrod Shapiro, DPM
PRESENT Practice Perfect Editor
[email protected]
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