Anda
Undoubtedly, the pandemic constitutes one of the busiest and most hectic periods in many a healthcare worker’s life. It may have also been one of the most stressful. In fact, a December 2021 piece published in The Lancet found that over 61% of surveyed physicians reported feeling burnt out amid COVID-19. As we enter the third year of the pandemic, cases slowly begin to fall. By now, you may have your sights set on a much-needed break. You might even be considering staying out of the country for a longer period of time. If this is the case, you might be wondering how you can continue working while away from home. So, here are some ideas for physicians to work from abroad for a while.
Fortunately, there are many ways you can practice medicine abroad, and we discuss a few of them below.
Physicians work abroad: Telemedicine
If you wish to continue treating your current patients while you’re away, try telemedicine. It will be just like conducting in-person appointments from your home or office — the only difference being that you’re out of the country. If you haven’t yet, you can start by signing up with a holistic telemedicine platform. It is easy to use and comes with a variety of features. Telehealth provider Wheel exemplifies this. It allows you to see patients on your own schedule. At the same time, it partners with multiple companies covering retail medicine, labs and diagnostics, direct-to-consumer pharmacies, and even remote patient monitoring. What you get is an end-to-end solution that helps you provide holistic patient care. It doesn’t matter anymore if you’re dozens of countries away.
NGO work
Working for an NGO is great for helping those with less access to healthcare services at the places you visit. Many NGOs host programs like medical missions. You can either volunteer or sign up to be one of their paid employees. Aside from providing healthcare services to patients who need it most, you might even find some ideas for clinical research that can help further the scholarship in your respective field. More importantly, we’ve mentioned in our piece on ‘Volunteer Travel Programs’ that you get one more benefit from such work: priceless and irreplaceable life experiences. One particularly popular NGO you might find relevant is Doctors Without Borders. They focus on projects in zones experiencing conflict or endemic diseases.
Consulting
If you wish to refrain from treating patients on your trips, you can always opt to become a consultant. This career path can be especially appealing to you if you prefer doing research. In creating their products and services, countless international companies — and even tech or healthcare startups that are just getting started — need the inputs of medical experts. As a consultant, you can also advise healthcare facilities on business-related issues. As a result, Chron reports that the demand for medical consultants will grow by 20% over the next decade. Even management consulting firms like McKinsey help physicians go beyond patient care by providing them opportunities to address the root causes of systemic healthcare issues.
As a physician, there are many career paths you can take that will allow you to do what you love, no matter where you are. Hopefully, the physicians’ work abroad options mentioned above will give you a few ideas on how you can get started.