When White is not the Color of your Parachute

Once upon a time, people kept a job for 40 years and then retired with a defined benefit pension. They worked for corporations or rode up the promotion and tenure ladder at universities.

Doctors did the opposite. They had their own private practices and worked for themselves. Now, the people who used to work for corporations are, in many instances by necessity, working for themselves or as part of the gig economy, while doctors are more and more employed by large, corporate health systems.

Many employed doctors, however, have discovered that the grass is not greener in the corporate health world and so , have come full circle back to looking for an alternative non-clinical career opportunity that gives them independence and the ability to follow their passion and exercise their mastery of their profession.

More and more white coats are getting the pink slip. Here's what to do if it happens to you.

Those that do should be prepared for some workplace culture shock and adjustment:

1. Generational work place and life style differences
2. An average job tenure that is less than 2 years
3. Salary and benefits packages that shift the risk to the employee
4. The death of corporate loyalty
5. The challenges and opportunities of technology enabled work habits
6. The challenges of winning the 4th industrial revolution
7. Technological job displacement and redundancy
8. Innovation fatigue
9. Rising opportunity inequality
10. Unaffordable housing in places with fewer and fewer parking spaces

Career change and advancement is a process of rewiring, not retiring. What color is your parachute? For many doctors, it won't be white any longer.

Some things don't change,though, even for ministers, who had to retire the white collar.

Arlen Meyers, MD,MBA is the President and CEO of the Society of Physician Entrepreneurs