Everything You Need to Know About Searching For a New Urgent Care Physician Role
Source: pxhere
Urgent Care Physician
The healthcare industry is enormous, encompassing dozens of different job roles; each of these can also contain numerous different subspecialties, which means that finding the perfect opportunity can be quite difficult if you’re only utilizing a general job board.
Even if you know just what you’re looking for, the terminology and variety of opportunities can make your head spin.
Today, we’ll explain the job title of an urgent care physician, the two different types of work positions that an urgent care physician can select, and how medical professionals can find new opportunities quickly and easily.
Urgent care physicians provide prompt services for non-emergency issues
If you’re interested in joining one of the general practice specialties, there are three paths available to you: primary care physician, emergency physician, and urgent care physician.
While primary care physicians help with preventative medicine, and emergency physicians work to stabilize patients undergoing a serious emergency, urgent care physicians combine a little of both.
The issues that urgent care physicians see on a regular basis are more time-sensitive than concerns that a patient may bring to their primary care physician, but they’re not likely to result in immediate death like those seen in emergency rooms.
Rather, urgent care physicians will help patients with things like minor infections, sprains, and common illnesses like the flu.
This can be an incredibly rewarding role for the right person, as you can provide immediate assistance to those who are in pain, and you’ll see a range of patients with all manner of illnesses.
You’ll also serve as an intermediary between patients and local ERs, relieving pressure on emergency room staff by assisting with issues that are uncomfortable but not life-threatening.
There are two types of positions for urgent care physicians: in-house and firm
If you’re interested in applying for an urgent care physician role, it’s important that you know the two types of position here. They both have the same responsibilities, but the business model is slightly different, and this can impact your compensation and job mobility.
In-house urgent care positions are those where you will be working directly for a healthcare system, either as a salaried employee or on a contract.
Depending on the size of the healthcare system, they may only have one urgent care location, or they may have several; you will probably work at only one of their locations, but this may differ depending on the staffing needs of your system. This provides you the benefit of stability: you can form close relationships with your colleagues and patients, and you have the support of a larger hospital system should you have any concerns.
In contrast, firm positions are great for those who are interested in flexibility and variety. These are positions through a locum tenens firm that assists hospital systems in filling staffing shortages, which means you may only work at a particular urgent care for a brief period before moving on.
This is great for physicians who are just starting out in the urgent care specialty and want to experience a variety of settings before choosing a more long-term position, or those who appreciate novelty and don’t like to be tied down to one location.
Now that you know the critical differences between these two job types, let’s talk about how to find these opportunities through urgent care physician job boards.
Career-specific job boards let you find exclusive opportunities much faster
While general job boards are good for those who could fit into a number of different niches, they fall flat when it comes to those in specialized fields, like the medical industry. You’re only looking for one type of job, which is why it only makes sense to look on a job board that only contains positions in the healthcare field.
Because you’re not sifting through pages and pages of unrelated listings, you can streamline your job search and begin applying much faster. These boards are also designed specifically for medicine, so they have filters that are highly useful for physicians, such as specialty, loan repayment assistance, nonprofit status, and bonuses.
If you’re looking to relocate for this position, you can hunt by general region rather than a single state, and you can also find companies that are willing to provide relocation assistance to those they hire.
Better yet, you’ll find jobs that you may have missed using a general job board: many hospital systems prefer to post listings only on specialized boards to avoid getting a variety of applicants who are wholly unqualified.
The company will have a smaller pool of applicants, meaning that each one has a better chance and will get a more personalized interview process than would be possible otherwise.
It’s clear that industry-specific job boards are the perfect opportunity for urgent care physicians and other medical professionals to find roles that suit their needs and experience.
If you’re ready to help ease the discomfort of others through urgent care medicine, be sure to check out a career-specific job board to find the hottest opportunities in medicine.
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