Designing Your Life and Career in Medicine


Discovery Resource # ST-01
Resource Topic: Designing Your Life and Career in Medicine
Planning Tools: Survival Tool
Career Phase: Discover
Description: Get on your pathway to success!
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Description:
The pathway to success is much easier to navigate when create a road map that will help you find the right job, in the right hospital, with the right staff and latest technology. A defined and well-managed job search process will help you obtain the career and lifestyle you envision.
Objectives:
  • Identify Strategies, tactics, techniques and procedures that will enable them define their direction, get focused, and gain control of the job search process.
  • Develop and implement a timeline that addresses their job search criteria, boards and other needs.
  • Compare and contrast their job criteria, boards and other needs to assess the scope of their job search timeline.
Author: Ingrid Walker-Descartes, MD, MPH, FAAP
Ingrid Walker-Descartes, MD, MPH, FAAP
Pediatrician and Director of the Pediatric Residency Program at Maimonides Children’s Hospital of Brooklyn

For the past decade, Dr. Walker-Descartes has prepared hundreds of residents and fellows for a meaningful career and life post training. She’s been instrumental developing residents clinically and preparing her trainees to secure desired fellowships and positions across the country.

Dr. Walker-Descartes serves as the Vice Chair of Education where she has impacted the learning community on several levels, including, resident wellness, work life balance and transitional planning for both trainees and faculty. She has identified and implemented innovative strategies of serving the needs of trainees and faculty across the GME spectrum through her involvement with the Association for Pediatric Program Directors.

As an author of this chapter and advisor to Career and Life Planning Guidebook for Medical Residents, Dr. Walker-Descartes believes this book will serve as a springboard to fill a much-needed gap to help trainees successfully transition into their career and life post training and create a platform for mentees (trainees) and their mentors to work through the non-clinical, business of medicine and identify the trainees’ purpose beyond medicine.

She is a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the Ambulatory Pediatric Association.
Author: Meagan W. Vermeulen, MD, FAAFP
Meagan W. Vermeulen, MD, FAAFP
Associate Program Director, Family Medicine Residency Program, Rowan University School of Medicine

Meagan Vermeulen has practiced family medicine for 20 years and is now the Associate Program Director of the Rowan University SOM Family Medicine Residency Program in Stratford, NJ. In her leadership role, she has pioneered the Family Medicine Resident Wellness Initiative, a full spectrum curriculum embedded in the residency program didactic to teach residents the skills of self-assessment, effective interpersonal communication, financial literacy, and self-care.

Dr. Vermeulen’s academic research focuses on resident wellness, including a recent study on rates of burnout among allopathic and osteopathic medical residents in the state of New Jersey. In addition to her research, she also serves as a mentor for the AAFP Emerging Leader Institute: Family Medicine Leads program. As a mentor, she supported a young physician in the creation of drpiggybank.org, a truly innovative source for resident and medical student financial literacy

Dr. Vermeulen truly believes that the tenets of wellness include self-awareness, effective communication, self-care, mentorship, and advocacy for those looking to grow and move forward in their career.