My thoughts wandered back to my first year in college, afflicted with infectious mononucleosis during my first semester. After spending 3 days in a University infirmary, my dad flew me back to NYC for a second opinion with his company doctor. “So you’re majoring in political science. You know there’s not a real world job out there,” declared Dr. Sussman behind his mahogany desk on Park Avenue. “You should try for medicine,” he counseled. Fifty years later, mentally replete with the teachings of Hans Krebs, Bert Vogelstein, Sidney Winawer and a host of others, I walked out of the endoscopy center, bid adieu to colleagues, staff and my endoscopes and entered the world of the “retired doc.” Now what? Travel the world, sleep in and watch “Get Smart” reruns, volunteer in indigent clinics, hangout in hospital dining rooms and talk about the good old days? Turning to the internet, I found a plethora of sites advising me on finances, providing lists of post-doc duties but no voices of the retired physician community describing the journey of the medical retiree. In this blog, I hope to stimulate discussion of meaningful and whimsical topics of value to the retired physician community. Let’s go!
Should you retire? A Cognitive Test of Retirement-Worthiness
There are plenty of retirement calculators on the internet using your financial health as barometers of retirement. For those that want to supplement your retirement decision, take the following quiz.
- The patient is “digitized” means digoxin rather than an electronic medical record.
- You know the difference between ouabain and digitoxin.
- Your mentors are Ben Casey and Dr. Kildare.
- Your go to analgesic is Zomax.
- Your peptic ulcer patients all go on heavy cream (Sippy diet).
- You were the treating physician at the Legionaire’s conference in 1979.
- You still carry two or more pens “just in case.”
- You are comfortable with terms like “thymol turbidity” and “Wasserman testing.”
- On the radiology order form you search for “pneumoencephalogram.”
- You enter the room and are surprised nobody offers their seat to you.
Score:
10/10: Methuselah Doc: go straight to retirement and offer your services to a Medical History Museum.
7-9/10: Research 55 and older communities: notify your colleagues of impending obsolescence.
4-6/10: Double your CME: spend more time with millennial docs.
0-3/10: Rest easy: proclaim you’re youth in the twitterverse and toss out a few Smiley emojis. You are low on the Obsolescence curve.