Aug 31, 2011 Last day on the job

So who was I before this blog on reinvention and rebooting.  Aug 31 (today) was the last day of my prior invention that began in 1976 at Yale Medical School and now ends at the University of Vermont College of Medicine / Fletcher Allen Health Care in Burlington VT.  

In between, I was many things – pulmonary physician, critical care physician, teacher of residents and fellows, fledgling researcher in mechanical ventilation.  Then, after retraining at Harvard School of Public Health, I was heavily involved in program and policy development in Vermont's tobacco control program, and a researcher on methods to improve providers’ adherence to guidelines on smoking cessation.  I led a committee that prepared ambulatory clinics to implement an EHR (EpicÒ), I chair the behavioral research protections committee at the University, I was the physician lead for our pulmonary clinic, etc, etc.  For those who wonder about the details, I have attached my CV to this blog.

So why would I leave this?  It sounds varied, interesting, and fulfilling.  Unfortunately, I was feeling stale, and not at all excited about the prospect of doing patient care for the rest of my working life (another 20 years!?).  I tried to go part time, but could not draw clear limits, particularly when our division lost some key people. It seemed that I can do academic medicine either full time or not at all.

While I have seriously considered taking this step for the last three years, I recognized many years ago during residency that I was not going to be able to keep doing clinical medicine past my fifties (I am 57).  As an intern, I wasn't sure what I was going to do, but I knew that whatever it was I probably wouldn't be paid much for it.  So, my wife and I started IRAs back in 1982 when we first were eligible, and we have continued to save aggressively so that I would have this option.

At the "retirement" party in the hospital today, I was asked repeatedly what I planned to do.  The honest answer is that I have ideas, but nothing concrete.  No job, no salary (well, $300 month for continuing to be the behavioral IRB chair at UVM), but enough resources to live on, a wonderful wife who works full time as a United Methodist pastor (we live in the parsonage as part of her compensation), and two children ages 22 and 19 who are doing well, and who will NOT have any college loans (another saving goal the past twenty years).  

I have absolutely no intention to sit around except when reading or writing this blog. I have a wilderness medicine backpacking course in less than a month to get in shape and to study for.  I may be called to be an Early Response Team (United Methodist Committee on Relief and Volunteers in Mission) member for folks in Vermont who have been ravaged by the flooding this last week.  

In the next few posts I'll try to briefly lay out the prep work I did, and the philosophy behind this reinvention.  From then on, we'll see how it works (or doesn't).