Four Reasons Why I Quit Family Practice.

Hey friends, I'm Ahmed Mirza a Family Nurse Practitioner currently practicing in an Emergency Department and a Urgent care.

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1. Schedule
Used to working 3 12's as a nurse. Going to 85 Monday through Friday was a huge shift. 30 min commute back and forth everyday, never got anything done after work. Only days off were the weekends, that means grocery stores, malls, restaurants, are all packed. Having days off in the week means you have time to do things when everyone else is working. Now in the ED/UC I can group my days off together and have extended weekends often. I now work 1214 shifts a month and have 56 days off in a row at least once a month, sometimes twice. This allows me time to travel, work on other stuff, or just hangout with the family.

2. Salary
Most family practice position as an NP are a set salary. You are expected to see an "X" amount of patients per day. usually 1525 in an 8 hour day. Not making anything more if you work harder, see more patients, or do more procedures. Some places might offer you incentive pay for productivity but its rare. It's hard to increase your pay unless your contract is up for renewal and you negotiate a higher pay. You are also working 5 days a week so picking up extra somewhere else would be difficult since you only have weekends available. Typical family practice salary for an NP is 80105k/ year.

3. Flexibility
Not flexible. Being a fulltime employee means you probably have very little flexibility in your schedule. Sure you can take time off or block your schedule for part of a day if there was something you needed to take care. But in general you will be expected to work 5 days a week. In most emergency medicine groups we are required to work a minimum of 120 hours per month to maintain fulltime status, that's just under 30 hours per week. If you want to earn more, you can easily work more hours. Makes it much easier to upscale or down scale your work based on how much you want to earn.

4. Work does not end
In family practice the work does not end when the patients leave. There are always patient messages to respond to, labs and other results to review from days prior. Often times you may find your self coming in to work an hour early or staying an hour late to complete these tasks. Now some position will factor in "admin" time in the contract to allow time to complete these task. For example, you may see patients for 35 hours a week, and have 5 hours paid admin time to work on those other items. Not all practices do offer that, so if you do plan on working in family practice, be sure to negotiate for it. What I love about emergency medicine is when you leave you are done, no call and nothing to follow up on. You give handoff to the next provider and you are done.

BUT, if you love family practice DO IT!

If you're interested in family practice, don't let these things stop you. Many providers are thriving in the field, and many nurse practitioner own clinics giving themselves better pay, flexibility, and control. But these are just a few reasons why I decided to leave it.