What can you do with a medical degree?

After graduating with a medical degree, most doctors complete a full three-year residency training program. Although it is possible for medical school graduates to obtain a general medical license after completing a single year of graduate school and passing all three steps of the US Medical Licensing Examination, clinical opportunities are extremely limited for those who do not complete residency and are certified by the board. .

Most doctors become traditional doctors, examining, diagnosing and treating patients.

For those looking to see patients, the long list of medical and surgical specialties includes pediatrics, internal medicine, radiology, psychiatry, oncology, emergency medicine, anesthesiology, general surgery, plastic and maxillofacial surgery, ophthalmology, and orthopedics.

Because a medical degree represents enormous financial and personal sacrifice, and pursuing a clinical career means years of rigorous training beyond medical school, most physicians expect to remain in clinical practice for decades. And while nearly two-thirds of doctors say they would still choose the profession if they had their careers over, according to a 2023 survey by The Physicians Foundation, life as a doctor is not for everyone.

Dr. Steve Liggett, vice dean for research at the University of South Florida’s Morsani College of Medicine and associate vice president for research at USF Health, is a non-clinical physician. As a professor of internal medicine and molecular pharmacology and physiology, he focuses on research and directs USF’s Office of Health Research.

To succeed in the non-clinical space will require additional training, he says. It’s not really feasible, for example, to be the molecular biologist that I am and not have had any training in molecular biology.

Here are some careers you can pursue as a doctor, including some that don’t require completing a residency or additional training.

Liggett says he sees doctors who have completed their clinical training move on, after a few years of practice, to work in early clinical trials and drug development in the pharmaceutical industry.

“They love it. They don’t see as many patients, but they’re really involved at the forefront of what’s going to be the next generation of drugs coming out, often in their specialty,” he says. and this is one of the most common paths I have seen.

Doctors in this field may work for pharmaceutical companies, research organizations, or regulatory agencies in drug discovery, development, and licensing. Potential roles include medical advisor or medical science liaison officer, medical reviewer, clinical research physician, pharmacovigilance (drug safety) physician, and medical affairs specialist.

They can consult with corporations or insurance companies, he says, or use their knowledge of clinical care to help doctors and clinical care centers improve their business and management practices.

Other consulting roles include serving as an advisor to a start-up medical company, working with a market research firm, educating physicians about equipment or technology, or providing input on the operations of a hospital or health system.

Medical schools rely on doctors who can teach for clinical rotations, where third- and fourth-year students learn from preceptors, and experts say U.S. schools are struggling to find them. Clinchot says most medical schools prefer to hire faculty who have clinical experience in addition to a medical degree.

Liggett says doctors who choose teaching often offer didactic instruction for first- and second-year medical students, or evening teaching with small groups.

“Medical schools are taking this very seriously and want full-time professors,” Liggett says, “and a doctor could certainly do that.

Public health deals with health problems at the population level, including causes, prevention, and intervention.

Some people get a master’s degree in public health” after graduating from medical school, Liggett says, “and then they can be more of an epidemiologist and look at national trends, look at data across states or zip codes to try to understand the environment. basis of the disease or the way in which communicable diseases can be transmitted, for example.

But there are public health roles for physicians beyond epidemiology. According to PublicHealth.org, physicians who transition to work in public health “can still provide individual clinical care, but they also spend more of their time developing public health programs and initiatives. Their credentials as physicians uniquely qualify them to advise and authorize”. public health initiatives and provide medical advice and education to the entire community.”

Medical writers communicate complex scientific and clinical data to various audiences. The field includes scientific writers, technical writers, regulatory writers, promotional writers, health marketers and health journalists, according to the American Medical Writers Association.

According to AMWA, there is a growing demand for medical writers to produce continuing medical education materials, health care policy documents, scientific and medical journal articles, medical conference abstracts, journal and newspaper articles, medical books , advertising materials, regulatory documents, including US Food and Drug. Administration presentations, white papers and decision aids for patients.

While there are many alternative careers for doctors who want to move away from clinical care, Clinchot says medical schools aim to admit students who will eventually practice medicine in part because the U.S. faces a severe doctor shortage that is expected to worsen as medical students and doctors struggle. with debilitating stress, burnout and disruptive changes in healthcare practice.

The Association of American Medical Colleges estimates that the US could face a shortage of up to 86,000 physicians by 2036, and according to a June 2023 survey by Merritt Hawkins for The Physicians Foundation, 28% of physicians who responded said they would like to retire within the next year, an increase of 21% by 2022.

Our entire curriculum and career counseling is geared toward clinical careers, so we don’t even have a track within the MD program for non-clinical careers, Clinchot says. We have several tracks (including one) for research that is a clinical scientist, so you are doing both clinical work and research. We do not have a track for students who only want to do non-clinical work.

Clinchot says most students, even those who choose not to complete a three-year residency, don’t stop at the medical degree.

Most will continue for at least a year,” he says, “because the extra year of training after your doctoral degree allows you to get a license to practice medicine.”

That extra year is worth it for most, Clinchot says, since several years have already been devoted to medical school.