Sticking Around

A young Ophthalmologist called me for advice two days back, he has been practicing for 8 years in a small town, and his practice does not seem to go anywhere, and he is finding it difficult to survive, he asked me if he should close the practice and look for a corporate Job or join another practice?

I need to advise him properly, should I advise him to close shop, or stick around? I decided to ask him to stick around

When people want to give up- one of the below may be the reasons

1) The Grass is greener on the other side kind of thinking

2) Annoyance and Frustration

3) Lack of understanding that known devil is better than an unknown angel.

I will not vouch that the advice to stick around is always correct -but it can be a good advice one third of the time when you are young and half of the time when you are older. But when it is a good advice, it will be one of the best advice.

Medical Practice is nothing, but relationship and network building and it takes time to build the networks. So, when our young Doctor closes shop, he will lose all the network he has built over the past 8 years, and it will be difficult to build such a network again. Some networks take time to compound, and we should be sticking around till the network effect multiplies and compounds. Hence sticking around for some more time shall do the magic.

Same applies to people working in a hospital, should they continue in One Hospital or move ahead and join a new organization? If  you are someone with a Employee Mindset -definitely sticking around in one organization will be more beneficial since you will have developed the skill sets, seniority and network in that particular organization which has to be built again when you change jobs.

Another thing which I suggested the Doctor is introspection of why his practice is not doing well- and suggested that he should think of reengineering his practice and identify the lacunae’s and work on it step by step to sustain and grow the practice.

So my suggestion is if you decide to quit – quit early- not after putting in years of effort and hard work, quitting in earlier stages is better- since the next venture or Job may have that compounding effect of growth.

Dr T.Senthil

Founder and CEO

Ophthall Practice Development

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