I promise to, I know I'm not running a meeting, but I promise to keep us on time, and I promise to cover a lot in a little bit of time. So I was tasked with covering how do I change my job mid-career. I'm gonna be talking a lot about myself in this, so I won't give you too much upfront in my bio, but I will say I am currently, I would say, maybe on the late end of my mid-career era, and the story I'll be telling you about will be sort of on the earlier end of my mid-career era. So where I'm at currently, I am an associate professor at University of Maryland School of Pharmacy. I'm also vice chair for clinical services and the residency program coordinator for the pharmacotherapy program, and you will learn a lot more about me in the coming minutes, so. I don't think that... Yep, right up, next one up, there you go, right there. There you go, oh, perfect. Okay, and I realize in talking to a lot of you guys today that we're probably a good mix of, we've got some mid-career folks, probably a few early career, and certainly a lot of experienced folks. So I guess I'd like you to kind of, as you hear me talk through this, think about it, if your early career, think about this as potentially affecting you now, but also in the near future, kind of what you might be thinking through. And then for anybody who's later career, think about this and how it could affect potentially your mentees in the future. So I have no disclosures to mention to you guys. Okay, so I wanna start off by kind of talking through the career stages, and I know I realized that I started talking about the career stages, and you might not really even realize what career stage you're currently in. So let me briefly define what I'm referring to for that before we really dig in, because I realized, too, that depending on what resource you look at, you might get different explanations of what these career stages are. And I also realized, are we in PowerPoint mode now, that when you're, especially, there are a lot of physicians in the room, and your age ranges might not exactly correlate to this. So this is what is out there in the literature for career stages. But I think you could probably, based on kind of the descriptions of the different stages, probably figure out where you identify. But the exploration phase, that's really early career. This is when people are just trying to figure out, like, what is my dream? What do I wanna be when I grow up? Where do I see myself in 20 years? What are my interests? What have I completed a degree on? And kind of go from there. In the establishment phase, this is kind of, I think, early career as well. But you're starting to get your bearings. You might have your first job. For physicians, you're probably definitely still in training at this point. But you might have a good sense of what you're good at, and the day-to-day job. But you might wanna, in addition to whatever's required by your institution, seek out additional certifications, potentially even advanced degrees, to really set yourself apart and figure out what your future trajectory might look like. And then mid-career, which is the focus of what I'll be talking about. So this is typically kind of that fork in the road. So people either figure out, I really, really like what I'm doing, and I'm gonna keep on doing this for a while, or they decide, maybe I have inspiration to go in a different direction, and then they might seek out additional opportunities to kind of maybe veer off into that direction. And then late-career, this is when typically you start to kind of seek out mentees, or think about people who might be a good fit to kind of following your footsteps. You might really start to prioritize figuring out what your hobbies are, and actually thinking about retirement planning. And then decline, I hate that terminology, but that's really, I wish it was something more positive. That's really as you're preparing for retirement and thinking about not only the financials, but also, what am I gonna do? What am I gonna enjoy doing when I retire, and no longer do this every day? So for a lot of people that might actually be consulting, or part-time, or other creative endeavors that align with the job that you've had over the course of your career. So, I think it was Sergio was talking about the reasons people stay. Well, I'm gonna talk about the reasons people leave. And really kind of talking about the same things. But this data was derived from a study that was done in 2021, you know, peri-pandemic. Kind of looking at, there was a massive efflux of people leaving the career market, and so figuring out why did those people leave. And actually, about two-thirds of people, so this was kind of a select all that apply question. So they could pick a number of different reasons why they left their job. But people left their job because of pay, but also advancement. Those were kind of the top two drivers of during the pandemic why people were changing jobs. But then respect was the reason in about half of the respondents. And then personal reasons, I mean, that was probably the largest if you add up all the various personal reasons why people might have left the job. For a large part during the pandemic, it was related to childcare issues, for example, but it might be oftentimes related to relocation or something like that. All right, so let's say you do commit to changing jobs mid-career, or you have a mentee that would like to change jobs mid-career. How do you actually navigate this without actually having, how do you navigate a job change mid-career without having a mid-career crisis? And so there's a lot of literature out there, like the top 10 ways to do this or whatever, but I kind of picked out what I felt were most relevant to us in healthcare and what I found most interesting in terms of what could help us navigate this kind of change. So there's this exploration phase described, meaning you really are just kind of like, kind of that exploration phase early in your career, really seeking out what is it that I want to do? And that might be a number of different things. So you might have a number of things that you'd be interested in, but you, and you don't want to be so broad in terms of what you might do that you're not able to really identify something and then therefore kind of take the next actions to get to that goal. With that, if you have a couple of ideas about what the direction is that you might want your job to, your next job to be, seeking out educational opportunities to really validate your ability to step into that role. And then kind of along with that, I call it diversifying your portfolio. So making sure that you have a diverse set of skill sets where you could potentially step into a role that maybe you didn't even anticipate, but something in your skill set is something that catches that employer's eye that really sets you apart. And then very importantly, networking. And I would view networking as really a marathon, not a sprint. It's about initiating those relationships, but then also maintaining them over time. You really never know when those relationships are going to pan out. So as I said, I'm really gonna talk about myself during this, using myself as a case study. So this is me in 2016 with my pharma-ly. For those of you who don't know, that's a pharmacy family. But I was kind of living the dream in terms of my job. I was supervisor of clinical services. I had a team of about 20 pharmacists that reported to me. I absolutely loved them. They loved me. We were productive, happy. I was a residency program director for critical care. Here I am getting an award. I mean, I kind of had it all. Personally, I had the house, the hubby, the dog, and the toddler. So things were pretty good. I was pretty satisfied with where my career was going. But I also was living in Connecticut at the time and had family in Maryland. And ultimately, my husband and I, both of us, our personal life really drew us back to Maryland. Go Ravens, Orioles, Terps, Os, can't forget the Os. And so this is really my journey with that. So as I mentioned, really the top driver for my reason to leave was the location being in Maryland. I actually always wanted to work in academia. That was always a dream. I was working at an academic medical center, but not affiliated with the School of Pharmacy directly. I had no official appointment. And so that was always my ideal. My ideal was working with medical ICU patients. That was my area of specialty and an area that I had worked in my entire career. And then I really wanted that flexible schedule. So I wanted to be like that woman dancing with my kids in the middle of my living room. No, I wanted that flexibility in order to maintain my family life as well. So those were the things that I considered in my exploration phase and thinking about what that next job might look like and scoping out what the opportunities were in my ideal location. So over the course of many years, so obviously this is not something that you can do overnight. I made sure to diversify my portfolio. I really wasn't required to do any research or teaching, but that was something that I continued to do because of that interest in academia. Patient safety was, I felt like, not only an interest of mine, but also something that would help with my current job at the time, as well as a potential opportunity for job growth in the future and potential job opportunities in my new location. I took on an administrative role thinking that might open some doors if I had that leadership experience. And then I also maintained my clinical skills. And taking on a more heavier administrative load, I was encouraged to step away from practice at the time. But again, I didn't know that this was what I was gonna do forever or where I was gonna be forever. So I ensured that I was covering clinically every once in a while to maintain that competency. And then I also sought out the education. So I didn't go for any advanced degrees, although I kind of wish I had. But I did complete a teaching certificate at University of Connecticut and maintained board certification in pharmacotherapy and clinical care. And then the networking. So conferences like this, I maintained relationships with my, I was a graduate of University of Maryland School of Pharmacy, maintained relationships with the faculty there, kind of strategically, but also obviously I actually enjoyed keeping in touch with them. But like I said, it's really important to, I think, maintain those relationships. It's a marathon, truly. Because again, you never know how that will pan out in the future. So where that took me was I landed my dream job. I had a faculty, I do have a faculty appointment at the School of Pharmacy, working in the medical ICU, had a leadership role within the residency program, kind of was able to do it all. And so that was great. For seven years, I felt like my career was just like propelling forward once again in a different trajectory, but once again, very successful. And then change happens. So I love this quote, the only way to make sense of change is to plunge in and enjoy the dance. And so post-pandemic, hospitals were feeling the pressure. And so contracts between our school and the hospital were very tense. And a lot of the faculty positions for the practice were actually cut. And so I no longer had a practice site. So as you can imagine, that was a little bit of a shock. And I reached out to Judy and various other mentors and was like, what am I gonna do now? But what I realized, it was an interesting scenario because it was not necessarily a job change, but a role change. And so what I needed to do is kind of shift my mindset and have an open mind that potentially sometimes in our greatest, I guess, frustrations or disappointments come our greatest opportunities. And so as John Devlin said, this is great. I have all the time now to dedicate to research and scholarship and kind of explore what my interests are. And so I am fully funded by academia now. But it's just a kind of a lesson in I think being open-minded to whatever's next and being open to the next challenge. So with that, the do's and don'ts for mid-career job change, I was really excited because the AMA actually picked up my interview with SCCM last year and wrote an article about it as kind of a standard for position job change and kind of some tips. But I'll go through these tips with you guys. So you don't wanna quit the wrong way. I think I would definitely advocate for transparency along the way. Telling your employer that you're potentially seeking another opportunity. I think if you're seeking another opportunity for a personal reason, such as a location change, oftentimes they'll help you identify a good fit. If you're seeking another opportunity because you're not satisfied with the current role, that might be also another opportunity for them to potentially change the role that you're currently in to fit your needs. Do give adequate notice. Oftentimes, there's within your contract or there are restrictions about what that timeline might look like, so make sure that you're at least meeting that. You don't wanna give too much time, however, because that can oftentimes lead to stagnation and kind of create awkward tension as well. Don't feel bad. So I think in healthcare, we often think that it's taboo to look for other jobs, whereas in a lot of other fields, it's very much encouraged. So what I would encourage is it's healthy to look at other opportunities because if anything, if you identify that you're very happy in the place that you're currently at, it solidifies your desire to stay in your current role, or perhaps you learn something different that you might actually take back into your current role and modify. And then do keep an open mind. You never know when there's gonna be a hiccup in the road. You don't know when that job that, sometimes the job that we're going to be in doesn't even exist today, and so it might be something that is new and innovative, and so you can't necessarily plan every step of the way. So with that, that's all I got. I look forward to talking to you guys more about this topic in the panel. Thank you.

job change

mid-career

exploration

skill sets

networking