He Wants to Hang Up Stethoscope

It was a classic family scenario: Young Fred Weisman wanted to be an engineer. His father thought the boy would make a brilliant doctor. The elder Weisman prevailed. And for the last 20 years, Fred Weisman has toiled as an emergency-room physician and internist.

But Weisman, like many people who put aside their adolescent dreams, continued to wonder if he’d made the right choice. Would he have been happier as an engineer? Or might there be some other vocation--computer consultant, writer, entrepreneur--that would be more fulfilling for him than medicine?

His dissatisfaction has become more urgent lately as he, like others in his field, faces some stressful challenges: demanding clients, draconian insurance reimbursement rules and mounting paperwork.

“I fundamentally do not like what I do,” Weisman said.

Adding to his woes, Weisman, now 47, took a major hit in pay last year. His salary at a Newport Beach clinic was reduced by nearly $100,000. Granted, his current $170,000-a-year income might seem a king’s ransom to many, but the unexpected pay cut has forced Weisman and his wife, Leslie, who live in Newport Beach, to reassess their lifestyle and goals.

For help, Weisman consulted Nicholas Lore, founder of the Rockport Institute, a career counseling organization based in Rockville, Md.

Weisman told Lore that medicine had lost its allure for him. But Weisman doesn’t know what he wants to do next. He had been hoping to finance a transition out of medicine by introducing and marketing an herbal product he devised called Sober-Up, designed to reduce the intoxicating effect of alcohol and minimize hangovers. He had thought that perhaps this product would generate enough income for him to launch a new career.

Lore began with tests intended to assess Weisman’s personality, aptitudes, interests, habits and lifestyle. He also had Weisman do several exercises to help him gain insight into his deeper goals and motivations.

Based on the results of those, Lore said that Weisman is actually well-suited for the medical field in aptitude and personality, and that perhaps a career in engineering, writing or entrepreneurship would not be as good a fit.

Lore urged Weisman to spend the next few months exploring each vocation thoroughly. He told Weisman that the further he strayed from his strongest talents, the less content he might be in a new field. Weisman should try to find a career that would fully exploit his quick thinking, medical expertise and analytical ability, Lore advised.

Lore and others also offered these tips:

* Explore medical Internet opportunities. Many physicians are migrating to Internet jobs at health-care-related “dot-coms.”

Said Stuart Weisman (no relation), a gastroenterologist who is now chief executive of EPhysician in Mountain View, Calif.: “There’s hardly a day that goes by that I don’t have a call from a physician asking, ‘Do you have any positions available for me?’ ”

Fred Weisman will need to get the appropriate credentials for such a vocation, but once he has them, he might apply for a senior management position at a medical Internet company. These jobs often pay $150,000 or more annually and may offer lucrative stock incentives, said George Savage, a physician who is now president and CEO of CareThere in Redwood City.

Weisman also should carefully consider whether this industry’s hard-driving culture and job requirements would suit him. Medical Internet jobs are stressful, perhaps more so than physician work, said Vikas Bhushan, a former radiologist and now CEO of Medschool.com in Santa Monica.

“You’ll be working just as hard at an Internet company as in your practice,” said Bhushan, adding that 100-hour workweeks are common. “I’d say my radiology job was much easier.”

* Learn more about business and information technology. Most doctors who successfully cross over from medicine to management jobs with Internet companies already have extensive business experience, experts say. Weisman can acquire expertise through a variety of avenues, including working with a mentor or enrolling in an MBA program, said Michael Ruxin, a former emergency-room physician who is now CEO of Global Medical Technologies in Denver. Weisman is unable to return to school full-time now, but he might consider options such as distance learning, summer session classes, seminars or part-time programs.

The American College of Physician Executives offers certificate and master’s programs in medical management throughout the country. Stanford University offers an online certificate program in bioinformatics (the development and creation of information technology for molecular biology) that Weisman might find interesting, suggested Holly Atkinson, a doctor-turned-medical journalist who is now CEO of HealthAnswers Inc.’s new-media division in New York City.

If Weisman can publish more papers in peer-reviewed journals, he could consider applying for an academic position at a medical school, suggests Arthur Manoharan, a former staffer at the federal Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta who gave up medicine to pursue a career in art.

* Carefully assess what it would take to get a new herbal product to market. Weisman is not likely to get rich quick or easily with Sober-Up, marketing experts say.

“He wants to make money passively on this product and derive a benefit from it without any effort, but this isn’t realistic,” said Jay Abraham, a marketing expert based in the South Bay.

Sober-Up would have to be formulated, manufactured and packaged and would have to undergo extensive testing. It would have to meet its labeling claims or it could face a Food and Drug Administration recall, said Sara Lovelady, brand manager for Rainbow Light Nutritional Systems in Santa Cruz. Abraham estimates that Weisman would have to invest $50,000 to $60,000 out of pocket just to get started.

Weisman has been hoping to introduce the product to major chains such as 7-Eleven, but competition is fierce among “point-of-sale” product vendors for shelf or counter space at such outlets. To get Sober-Up considered by a major retailer, there would first have to be great consumer interest in it.

“And that costs an enormous amount of money,” said Philip Duterme, chief executive of herbal health-care company Himalaya USA in Houston.

Most discouraging, perhaps, is that the FDA would probably classify Weisman’s herbal product as a drug because of its purported actions against alcohol toxicity, said an FDA spokesman in Washington. According to FDA estimates, it could take eight years or longer for Weisman’s product to be thoroughly tested and studied before it would be approved for sale to the public.

* Budget wisely. Since it’s unlikely Sober-Up will generate immediate income for Weisman, he’ll need to find other ways to finance his transition out of medicine. Weisman consulted with financial advisor Neal Frankle of Frankle & Associates in Woodland Hills for advice on how to better position himself for a career change.

Frankle urged Weisman to aggressively cut back on spending and to consider relocating to an area less pricey than Newport Beach. With markedly lower monthly mortgage payments and other reduced expenses, Weisman might be able to take a part-time medical job while he pursues training in another field.

The next step? Weisman still isn’t sure. He’s looking into engineering and medical computing. And to exercise his creativity, he has started to write a novel.

This time around, Weisman says, he’ll listen to his mother, who told him years ago: “Do whatever you like. Do whatever you enjoy the most.”