Nearly 5 years into practice, I have negotiated my first contract, multiple pay increases, call compensation, and independent contractor status. I prepared by researching my market value and reading about negotiation strategy. The following are some points I have learned along the way. If you negotiate in medicine, you may feel like the only one. Over the years, my mid-career colleagues confided that they have not received a single pay increase, only the occasional pay cu

This post contains affiliate links. SheMD will make a commission at no extra cost to you should you click the link and make a purchase. Read our disclosure for more info. It doesn’t matter how many times I prepared myself for the moment. It doesn’t matter that I told all my friends and family to understand that there is a real possibility I might not receive the email that we were all hoping for. There was still a part of me, probably bigger than I realized at the time, that

When I was presented with the opportunity to write a piece for SheMD, I was immediately excited to sign up for the task. My husband knows this well, he has heard me say it for only the last 10 years or so: I want to write. I really want to write. I want to write about so many different things. And with the exception of grade school poetry, college term papers, the occasional essay exam question, and one review article I had published in 2006 in a medical journal, I have nev

As Editor of SheMD, I'm sharing my story of #PhysicianInfertility, because we have to start the conversation. We have to talk about the fact that we, female physicians, have INCREASED rates of infertility. Physician infertility isn't something we learn about in medical school. We learn about physician infertility when we become the patient, when it may be too late. My fertility journey is not typical.  I have not spent years “trying”. In fact, I have spent years trying NOT

This post contains affiliate links. SheMD will make a commission at no extra cost to you should you click the link and make a purchase. Read our disclosure for more info. In medicine, there is an added pressure among female physicians to be “strong.” To work extra hard as a physician (while also being a perfect “mom,” “wife,” or “daughter” outside the hospital), and to exhibit resiliency when faced with micro aggressions and inequality in the workplace. Yet, even after years

In honor of National Infertility Awareness Week #NIAW2022 and the reality that ONE in FOUR female physicians will face infertility, we're sharing information on egg and embryo freezing or cryopreservation. These are very personal decisions, and there is NO RIGHT ANSWER. Our goal is to empower women to make the decisions that are "right" for their personal lives - allowing them to choose both career and family if they so desire. We aim to provide information to help future ge

I want to have kids young and I want to get married young. This is a strange thing to hear from a twenty-two year old in 2019. “Don’t you want to live your life and not be tied down?”, “You have to be established in your career first.”. Other women look at me as if I am telling them I want to be a housewife and I’m setting the feminist movement back sixty years. These are the types of comments I get from my friends. The same friends who at twenty-two are done with school, be

As medical students, residents, fellows and newly minted attending physicians, we pride ourselves in practicing evidence-based, data driven medicine. Statistics, randomized-controlled trials, level 1 evidence and highly powered studies are what contribute to our armory of data that we use to diagnose and treat medical issues. Well, infertility is no exception and recent and current data is clearly showing that this is a growing global health issue that affects men and women r

An anonymous reader recently posted a piece on fertility and medical education. She posed some important questions to this community of brilliant and inspiring physicians: What your journey was like? For those that balanced being supermom during residency, HOW? For those physicians struggling with infertility, looking back, was it worth it? Will it be worth it for me? What advice would you give young trainees for whom having children is a top priority in their lives just li

Today Dr. Sabrina Gerkowicz, a reproductive endocrinologist shares with us some very important findings on physician infertility.