What do you do for a living?

I am a registered nurse in the emergency department at a hospital.

How would you describe what you do?

I care for and treat the ill and injured patients and manage their care while they’re in the department and transfer them either home or they get admitted to the hospital.

What all does your work entail?

There’s the physical element of it as far as standing on your feet for twelve hours a day, whether that be walking, moving and rescuing patients, moving stretchers, equipment, things like that. There’s a mental or cognitive element where you have to apply your training and education as far as administering medications and making decisions for a patient’s care.

We do technical things as far as IV’s, blood draws, EKG’s. We hang intravenous drips and medications and manage and titrate those. We perform CPR and life saving measures. We communicate with our physicians in the department, letting them know and updating them on the patient’s condition and changes that occur while they’re there.

We transfer patients to the floors, we discharge them, we transport them around the hospital to where they need to go as far as having a CT scan or whatever.

when you have a good outcome with somebody, you really feel like your direct care of them has made them better in some way, and they tell you that they appreciate the care that you’ve given them. That’s very satisfying and rewarding.

We administer, medications and monitor pain levels and do dressings and all that stuff.

And then there’s kind of an emotional aspect of it too as far as you’re dealing with people that are very sick and sometimes it’s not a happy place to be, and you’ve got angry people so it’s kind of a roller coaster place to be.

What’s a typical work week look like for you?

Well for me, I’m not a full time right now. When I was full time I would work thirty-six hours a week.

Most hospitals now have 3 twelve hour shifts, three days a week, with thirty-six hours a week, and that’s considered full time. But I’m an as-needed employee so I can work thirty-six hours a week or I can work no hours a week, it just depends on what they need. Right now I’m working probably twelve to twenty-four hours a week. It just depends on when they need me and when I want to work.

How did you get started in this career?

Well, I was actually a senior in college getting my psychology degree and I thought I wanted to do that. I was looking into graduate school options because I was finding out that there’s not a lot of options in psychology without a graduate degree.

About that time my grandfather was really sick on my mom’s side and I was spending a lot of time in the ICU in the hospital with him. And something kind of spoke to me about it and I started looking into nursing programs, and found one. The good thing about it is that if you already have a degree in something else you can get a nursing degree in about 1 ½ to 2 years. So that’s what I did, and really, I guess it’s because my grandfather was sick that I was inspired.

What do you like about what you do?

I like the fact that I can make a difference in people’s lives immediately, and I can see the effects of what I do. I have skills that a lot of people don’t have and I feel like I can really make a difference in the outcome of my patient’s illnesses directly. I get a lot of reward from that.

What do you dislike about the job?

I guess in a nutshell I dislike the fact that hospitals are being owned more and more by big corporations and those corporations are being controlled by medicare insurance companies as to what they will and won’t pay for and all that trickles down to the nursing.

We are limited in how much input we can have over our practice, where pretty much they just tell you how things are going to be and you have to do that..

the most challenging thing is when you have something that you can’t fix…something tragic has happened and you can’t help, there’s nothing that you can do..it’s a challenge to figure out how to deal with it emotionally and not take that stuff home with you and let it affect your family life.

And it’s really just the policies and procedures like, charting, computer systems, etc. There are a lot of things that we have to use every day that slow us down and make things a lot less efficient. It’s not really anything to do with your clinical skills or your judgment, it’s just infrastructure and things like that we’d like to see improved, and with the larger companies owning the hospitals it’s seems to be harder to make changes or improve.

How do you make money or how are you compensated?

It’s hourly.

How much money do you make as an RN?

I make $27.05 an hour. And again, I don’t have guaranteed hours, so whenever I work I just get paid that much hourly.

How much money did you make starting out as an RN?

My first job, my base rate was $15.00 an hour. That was ten years ago.

Would you say there are any perks associated with what you do?

Yes, definitely. The biggest perk that I can say right now is that the three twelve-hour shifts give you a lot of free time during the week. You can have four days off and most places will allow self-scheduling, which means you can pretty much say I want to do my three days in a row and be off the rest of the week, or I want to work mostly weekends, or whatever works best for you.

There’s a lot of scheduling flexibility. That’s a big perk. You get pretty good benefits too, usually paid vacation and health insurance and all that.

What education or skills are needed to be an RN?

Well right now to be an RN like I am you can either have a two-year associate’s degree or a four-year bachelor’s degree, and you can function in the same capacity in the hospital or in any RN setting. There is a push nowadays for the bachelor’s to be the standard for all nurses. I have the bachelor’s degree but that’s just because the program I went to was accelerated, but you have to have either the associate’s degree or the bachelor’s degree and then you have to pass the national certification exam to get your nursing license.

As far as skills, I think that somebody should be very flexible. You have to be flexible as far as making decisions and changing things on the fly, you can’t be somebody who doesn’t deal with change well. You have to be able to be around people and deal with people and the public, have people skills, and physically be able to do the job, because it is somewhat physically demanding. I think people forget about that, you’ve got to lift patients around in beds and stuff like that, it can probably be pretty tiring.

What is most challenging about what you do?

Probably the most challenging thing is when you have something that you can’t fix, like you have somebody that’s dead or dying or something tragic has happened and you can’t help, there’s nothing that you can do.

So I think that when that does happen, that’s hard, and it’s a challenge to figure out how to deal with it emotionally and not take that stuff home with you and let it affect your family life.

What is most rewarding about what you do?

Well, I guess kind of the opposite of that is when you have a good outcome with somebody, you really feel like your direct care of them has made them better in some way, and they tell you that they appreciate the care that you’ve given them and that’s very satisfying and rewarding.

What advice would you offer someone considering this career?

I would say it’s a good career to choose right now because there’s been a nursing shortage for as long as I can remember and it’s just going to get worse because we have an aging population.

I think that people just need to really understand that it’s very important to talk to some nurses that they know and that they can find and ask them what it’s really like, because I think some people go into this job not really realizing how it’s really going to be.

How much time off do you get or take?

Well, when I’m working full time four days a week is the regular scheduled time off. And then usually you get about two or three weeks of paid vacation a year. Every pay period you might earn three+ hours of paid time off. And once you accrue enough of that, then you can use it. So if you’re a brand new person in the hospital it probably adds up to two weeks a year, and as you gain seniority in the hospital and are there for more and more years, you earn that time off faster.

The biggest perk…is that the three twelve-hour shifts give you a lot of free time during the week.

What is a common misconception that people have about what you do?

I don’t’ think people really have an understanding of how involved nurses are in the care of patients. You know, we’re definitely not doctors, I totally understand that, it’s very different than medicine but I think there’s kind of a lack of respect for nurses, at least in my experience.
Not always, but I think the misconception is that we’re kind of blue-collar, you know, we work shifts, we get paid by the hour, but it’s really not, it’s much more complex than that, but I don’t think the general public really knows that.

What are your goals and dreams for the future in this career?

Well, right now I’m pretty good where I am. I’ve gotten my bachelor’s degree already. I did go back to school for a semester and do a semester of the Master’s program because I thought I wanted to be a nurse practitioner, but I’ve changed my mind. I think I want to remain at the level where I am for now. I don’t want to go into management, I don’t want to go into higher practice, I just want to be a staff nurse in the ER.

What else would you like people to know about what you do?

I guess I would want people to know that nurses provide a critical element to any hospital stay. Patients spend most of their time with nurses when they’re in the hospital.

Dr. Randy Cole of the Boozman-Hof Eye Clinic was kind enough to share about his career as an ophthalmologist.  You can find his clinic and services here.

What do you do for a living?

I’m an ophthalmologist or an eye surgeon.

How would you describe what you do?

I’m generally working as a cataract and refractive surgeon.  So I do cataract surgery.  I do refractive surgery.  I see patients too, but the majority of what I do is related to providing cataract and refractive surgical services.

What does your work entail?

It entails being in the operating room during cataract surgery, doing refractive laser surgery, and seeing patients in the examining room.  And taking general ophthalmology call covering the emergency rooms of a couple of area hospitals.

It really is quite remarkable in terms of what we can do to improve people’s quality of life, ability to function, and restoring the precious sense of sight to a level better than they’ve ever experienced.

What’s a typical workweek look like for you?

We’re busy.  We work hard.  I’m taking call every second to third weekend and I operate all day Monday.  I’m in the clinic seeing patients all day Tuesday, Wednesday morning, and all day Friday.  I’m off Wednesday afternoon but in a typical week I’ll have about a 170 patient encounters.  Of those, about 40 are surgery encounters.

How did you get started as an ophthalmologist?

In medical school I just started thinking about what I wanted to do, what I like to do.  I knew some ophthalmologists who had been in practice while I was in high school and college in particular.  They seemed to like what they did and so really early on in medical school it became apparent to me that that’s the specialty that I wanted to go and try to get a residency position in.

In fact, I applied and got the position in the middle of my junior year while in school.  I had a position already nailed down at Little Rock so I didn’t even bother to apply to any other programs or residencies.

What do you like about what you do?

It’s challenging and extremely demanding.  I’m dealing in terms of microsurgery, millimeters, and having to be extremely precise.  There’s a lot of challenges and stress but it is very gratifying. I tell the people I work with over here it’s difficult but we need be realizing that really we’re in the business of miracles.  Doctors and nurses treat, only God heals, but at the same time I feel that we provide a valuable service in helping people in the precious sense of sight.

And modern cataract surgery and modern refractive surgery are truly remarkable in restoring vision to a level that’s better than people have ever had in their lives.  Younger people are having refractive surgery and they are not needing glasses anymore.

We’ve been using implants for older people, lens implants now that you can correct for astigmatism and can help them read so they’re seeing like 20 year olds and don’t need glasses.  It really is quite remarkable in terms of what we can do to improve people’s quality of life, ability to function, and restoring the precious sense of sight to a level better than they’ve ever experienced.

So that’s very gratifying.  At the end of the week you can be tired and be stressed and have some worries but you don’t ever get to the end of the week and wonder, “Did I really accomplish anything or do anything worthwhile?”

What do you dislike about this job?

Well, honestly there’s not any other job that I would rather do.  There’s not any other profession that I would say I wish I had not missed.  The only thing—like any work, the only thing that’s sometimes unpleasant is there’s stress. You’ve got to try to make people happy.  You’ve got to satisfy needs and expectations.  You’ve got to deal with insurance companies, medicare.  There’s rare lawsuits, so like with any work there’s just stress involved.

How do you make money or how are you compensated in this career?

Well, I’m an owner of the businesses that I’m involved in and I have partners as well.  But being an owner in this entity means I have ownership in the clinic and within the clinic I’m paid based on productivity.

And so I’m paid a percent of the profits or distributions of that entity that is derived directly from my productivity in the clinic and indirectly from the profits and percent of my ownership in our optical business and in the surgery center.

It’s all based on fee for service.

So it’s not like being a passive owner of a business.  If you park there, you’re working, doing surgery, doing exams, seeing patients then you’ll generate income.

So unlike somebody who may own a factory or a car dealership, they keep on making income whether they are there or whether they’re spending the winter in Florida.

How much money do you make as an ophthalmalogist?

The average income of an ophthalmologist is around $250,000-$300,000 and that income will vary depending upon how busy or productive an ophthalmologist might be.  The average productivity in a clinic or a benchmark productivity for an ophthalmologist is producing around $800,000 a year gross and he might keep around 40% of that.  And then busier ophthalmologists may produce two, three, or four times that much.

And if the ophthalmologist owns an optical clinic or surgery center that’s profitable, which they aren’t at all profitable, that income can also be supplemented between those other ancillary businesses.

And there are ophthalmologists that go bankrupt.  I bet there’s half a dozen I can name in in the last 10 years just in this state that actually have gotten into a bankruptcy and maybe they had to restructure or have their practice closed.

You’re going to have to finish high in your medical school class to get a residency position[in ophthalmology]. So you need to expect and understand that you’re going to have to be in the top 10% of your class to have a shot at getting a position which is real hard because medical school is not easy to get into in the first place.

The dynamic is changing in health care industry.  About a half of the new physicians are really not owners but employees of either clinics or health care systems. And so those doctors still make a reasonably good percent of their production but they don’t have a lot of autonomy.

The good news is you don’t have part of the ownership and the risk of going bankrupt and having to have a lot of administrative support people and put in extra hours in terms of leading a company or leading, managing and directing an entity.  So it can be that you may work less and have less stress in terms of the business administrative aspects of owning a business but you have less autonomy and you have less decision making latitude.  And essentially it’s somebody else who technically tells you what time to come in, what you need to do, and what’s expected of you.

How much money did you make starting out in this career?

Well, I started as an ophthalmology resident making around 25,000 a year, maybe a little less than that back when I first started.  I supplemented that by moonlighting in emergency rooms and then my first job in 1983 as an ophthalmologist in Florida was probably base salary of 75,000 with some production incentives.

Would you say there are any perks associated with your job?

Well, I think this job’s biggest perk is just the gratification of doing something really dramatic and helping restore sight and helping improve people’s life.

And that’s essentially life changing service you’re providing for people.  So the biggest perk or reward is the gratification of doing dramatic things to improve their vision and their quality of life.

What education and/or skills would you say are needed to do this job?

To become an ophthalmologist, you have to go to college.  I actually got accepted to a few medical schools before I got my undergraduate degree after just three years of college.

But generally you have to have an undergraduate degree and go to medical school and become an M.D.  And then there’s somewhere between 3 to 5 years of training to be an eye surgeon.

And it requires a certain amount of dexterity and hand-eye coordination to be able to do microsurgery.

And the uncertainty about that is you just never know when you could lose that.  If you come down with tremor, a neurological problem, Parkinson’s Disease, arthritis, or have a stroke, you’re done.

As far as determining if you have what it takes, there’s not really a process in this country or sort of an obstacle course or hand-eye testing to see if you can become a surgeon.  A lot of it just comes in the training, and in the process of the training, finding out if they can do it and if not they can become just a medical specialist rather than a surgeon.

So when you get in your internship training you kind of find out if this something you’re really cut out for or if you have to do more of a medical specialty in ophthalmology like a medical ophthalmologist.  You don’t necessarily have to do surgery.

There are certain specialties in ophthalmology that are less surgically inclined like being an neuro-ophthalmologist or being a specialist pediatric ophthalmologist.  They do less surgery and will do more of children’s exam and just some surgeries on the eye muscles.

This job also requires the ability to be able to interact well with patients.

And a successful ophthalmologist has a fairly high overhead with lot of employees in their practice.  So they have to have the energy and drive to see a lot of patients and to be able to manage all that.

What is the most challenging about what you do?

I’m a perfectionist and I can’t have complications so the most challenging thing is to try to maintain concentration and diligence to a point that I essentially avoid any complications in surgery at all.  So I’ve got to have zero tolerance for ever making a mistake or having a problem or complication related to an error on my part.  And that just takes a lot of attention to detail and experience.  And it’s mentally taxing and fatiguing. So I’m real hard on myself to avoid problems errors and complications.  Number two, people’s expectations as such that even if things go well they aren’t always uniformly happy, so that can be frustrating.

What is the most rewarding about what you do?

Well, the rewarding thing is that we are in the business of miracles and being able to restore the sense of sight to people who are really blown away.  Being able to see that is very gratifying.

What advice would you offer considering this career?

My advice would be it’s a good career.  I think it’s something worthwhile to do.  I would recommend it—for myself, over many other surgical specialties.  But you’re going to have to finish high in your medical school class to get a residency position.  So you need to expect and understand that you’re going to have to be in the top 10% of your class to have a shot at getting a position which is real hard because medical school is not easy to get into in the first place.

You got to be in the top 5 or 10% of your medical school class and that makes it even tougher.

So ophthalmology, dermatology, radiology, and orthopedics still are very highly sought after residencies.

And the nice thing about ophthalmology also is you’ve got a little more control over your time.  The surgeries are not emergencies so you can schedule them out in advance.  Not like in appendicitis or a gunshot wound that has to be fixed right now.

So you have a little more control that when you leave work you don’t often get called back at night and when you’re on call on the weekend it doesn’t mean you’re going to have to spend the whole weekend in the ER.

It’s not easy. It’s exacting. It’s stressful. There’s no margin for error but you get to the end of the week and you’ll know that you’re in the business of miracles and you’re not going to reach a point of the week or point in middle age where you look in the mirror and go, “Have I done anything with my life?”

It’s not like as a general surgeon.  If they get called on the weekend, chances are they are going to be spending sometime in the O.R. over the weekend.

And that’s not to say there aren’t emergencies. There could be perforating eye injuries, blood eye injuries, trauma, laceration of the eye lids, so there are a lot of things that can require us to have to come in and do surgery or just see somebody in the office for some medical eye problem.

How much time do you get off or do you take off?

Six weeks a year for meetings and vacations.

What is a common misconception people have about what you do?

Let’s see… People probably think that since I’m an ophthalmologist I prescribe a lot of glasses.  But I really don’t do much in a way of prescribing glasses because I’ve got a group of optometrists that I work with who take care of the glasses and the contact lenses.

What are your goals and dreams for the future in this career?

It’s hard to believe I’ve been out of medical school now for 33 years.  But I’m still young.  I’m 58.  So I would hope to have the health to be able to continue to work for at least another 10 years.  And I had planned on slowing down some and handing over things to one of the newer doctors but that didn’t work out so ironically I’m probably going to be the busiest in my life for the next 10 years doing more surgery than I have ever done before.   

What else would you like people to know about what you do?

I would just say that it’s not easy.  It’s exacting.  It’s stressful.  There’s no margin for error but you get to the end of the week and you’ll know that you’re in the business of miracles and you’re not going to have to reach the point of the week or point in middle age where you look in the mirror and go, “Have I done anything with my life?”

I think that it’s also worthwhile for people to know what we do in terms of cataract surgery is probably as high a level of service of cataract surgery as is available anywhere in the world.  Furthermore, I like them to know that there are a lot of options now in terms of the refractive lens implant where people can elect for distance vision.

They can elect for getting their stigmatism corrected.  They can also do what’s called a multi focal implant that they could actually also read through.  So there are a lot of options along the lines of the technology.  And I want them to know that we’re a team and staff extremely conscientious who wants to deal with everybody like it’s a family member.  And we have some measurable outcomes that are evidence of that.  For instance, we have the best record in the world on preventing infection after cataract surgery for example.

What do you do for a living?

I’m a medical oncologist.  There are several different types of oncologists. There are radiation oncologists who deliver the radiotherapy in the end of cancer care and medical oncologists oversee the overall care of the cancer patient and run the drug end of cancer care.

What does you work entail?

It entails primarily seeing patients in the office and seeing patients in the hospital.  We also do hematology because most oncology fellowships are combined with hematology, which is the study of cancers of the blood and benign conditions of the blood.  The oncology part of it is the cancer part.

We do consultations in the hospital and we run an outpatient cancer center where we give the drug cancer care. We primarily give chemotherapy but it can also be hormonal therapy. There are other types of drug treatments that we use for cancer as well.

What’s a typical workweek look like for you?

We work very hard like most physicians.  We probably work at least from 8 to 5 and we’re on call at night and we’re on call on weekends. I have a partner now so we switch weekends off but I would say your average medical oncologist probably works at least every other weekend and 5 days a week so there are a lot of work hours there.

I wouldn’t recommend going into this career if you’re doing it just to make money…You need to follow whatever your passion is, otherwise you’ll be miserable…If you’re doing something just to make these little rectangular, green pieces of paper you’re never going to be happy.

How did you get started in this career?

Well you have to go through medical school and get either an M.D. or a D.O. in order to go into either medical oncology or hematology/oncology.  You have to be board certified in internal medicine so you have to do an internal medicine fellowship and then after that you have to do the hematology/oncology fellowship. It’s 4 years of medical school and there’s 3 years of internal medicine and then another 3 years after that.  So it’s 6 years of training after medical school.

The reason I chose oncology/hematology is because it’s more my personality type.  There’s certain personality types that gravitate towards orthopedics or certain personality types that gravitate towards general surgery.  We deal with a lot of end-of-life care and end-of-life issues and there are some people who just can’t deal with those kinds of issues at all. It depends on their personality type. I think it ends up being someone who can deal with uncertainty better whereas the surgical type people I think have a difficult time dealing with uncertainty. Either something is black or white. There’s no shade of grey whereas people in our field end-of-life issues are all shades of grey.

You do a lot of hand holding and a lot of compassionate type care and issues and I just think certain personality types gravitate that way.

What do you like about what you do?

I think what I like most is what I just mentioned. It’s such an honor to be involved in patient’s care when it’s end-of-life because that’s a very personal, very sacred kind of thing.  And you develop strong relationships that way with your patients which is one of the things that makes the job hard as well.

There is another part of medical oncology that is so exciting now too, and it really fits people’s personalities that are into research too.

There are people that do this but don’t do patient care at all, they do just research.  There’s a huge amount of research in the molecular biology and new drug field.  In the last 10 years that we’ve had so many new drugs and so many new ways to treat this.  Many cancers used to be 100% fatal and some of them are now being rapidly cured.  There are all sorts of new things coming down the pike and that’s another exciting part of Oncology.

What do you dislike about the job?

I think probably what most people dislike about all of the medicine jobs now is just the amount of government intervention.  And that’s just going to get worse and worse over the next several years. We used to be much more autonomous and it’s just hard now dealing with both insurance companies and governments.  So dealing with the paperwork and government red tape is probably the worst part of the job.

How do you make money or how are you compensated as an oncologist?

I’m fee for service. I’m in private practice. Certainly there are hematology/oncology people that are employed by other organizations, but I’m fee for service.

How much money do you make as a hematologist/oncologist?

The median salary for medical oncologists in my region(Southeast) is right around $400,000 a year if you just take a median salary.

Certain regions of the country might be slightly higher than that.

How much money do you make starting out as an oncologist?

The starting salary for most oncologists is probably somewhere in the $300,000 range now.

What education or skills are needed to be a hematologist/oncologist?

Well like I said you have to have a college degree and then you have to be accepted to a medical school or a D.O. school and then you have to do another 3 year internal medicine fellowship and then you have to do a 3 year Hematology/Oncology fellowship so it’s a very big commitment of 10 years after college.

The hope would be that we’ll find treatments that work for a lot more of these diseases that we don’t have much in the way of treatment for. Many cancers used to be 100% fatal and some of them are now being rapidly cured.

What would you say is most challenging about what you do?

I really think the most challenging thing now is just all of the bureaucratic paperwork that we have to fill out. I probably spend 3 hours a day just signing forms. You know several years ago it wasn’t anything like that. It’s going to get nothing but worse with our current government situation.  But the patient care part of is still great and that’s still the reason we all do it..

What would you say is the most rewarding about what you do?

I think when you get a card from a patient or family saying how much they appreciated your care.  That’s very rewarding.

What advice would you offer someone considering this career?

I think you’ve just got to do it for the right reasons. I wouldn’t recommend going into this career if you’re doing it just to make money but of course that’s good advice no matter what you decide to get into to.

You need to follow whatever your passion is, otherwise you’ll be miserable the rest of your.  If you’re doing something just to make these little rectangular, green pieces of paper you’re never going to be happy.

How much time off do you get or do you take?

I take about 10 weeks off a year.  I take about 8 actual weeks of vacation and then two weeks of continuing education and medical meetings.

What is a common misconception people have about what you do?

I think the misconception that people have about all physicians is that money just rolls in and that we don’t work that hard. That’s a big misconception, we all work very hard. We all make good money but we all work very hard. So I think that’s probably the biggest misconception.

What are your goals and dreams for the future in this career?

The hope would be that we’ll find treatments that work for a lot more of these diseases that we don’t have much in the way of treatment for.

For example, there’s a new drug that came out a few years ago that treats CML which stands for Chronic Myeloid Leukemia. That disease used to be a disease that was 100% fatal in everybody within 2 years and now it’s 100% curable just by taking this capsule.  So there are a lot of cancers that we don’t have something like that for right now our goal would be there will be more of those treatments coming down the pike.

What else would you like people to know about what you do?

You have to be committed to going to school for a long time. A lot of it is about delayed gratification. Going into the medical career you really have to be willing to go the long haul and realize that it’s going to take a while.

What do you do for a living?

Hospital medicine, and it’s a new division of internal medicine which focuses on patients admitted to the hospital only.  The term hospitalist is now often used to describe this career.

How would you describe what you do?

I’d just say we take care of adult patients that are sick enough to be in the hospital, and that ranges from one-night stays to some element of critical care.

What all does your work entail?

Basically, it involves, at this point, shift work – where we’ll work several days in a row for the sake of continuity in managing people’s illnesses while they’re in the hospital.  Most patients are in, on average, three to four days, that we take care of them.

One part is managing people with medical illnesses that we manage by ourselves or with specialists consulting on our patients, and then maybe the more desirable part of our work is doing consults for surgeons.  So while surgeons, be it orthopedic, or general surgeons, or plastic surgeons, or ENT etc manage the surgical aspects of care, we manage the people’s chronic and acute medical problems.

What does a typical workweek look like for you?

We actually are on a rotation of nineteen days on and nine off.  Formerly, we did fourteen on and seven off.  In the nineteen on/nine off, there are fourteen days where we manage a census of in-patients, admits, and consults..  Then there are five days of night coverage at the end to round out the nineteen, we cover five 12-hour night shifts, and then have a weekend, the intermittent week and the following weekend off, to make nine days off.  But the customary hospital schedule is turning into a seven days on/seven days off, or ten days on/ten days off kind of thing, so that it’s becoming more in vogue for you to have about the same amount of work days as you do days off.

How did you get started in this career?

Hospital medicine is simply internal medicine residency applied over a career.  Internal medicine residency is 6 1/2 days a week of managing hospitalized patients and a half a day of clinic, and so all we’ve done is trim out the half day of clinic and manage hospitalized patients.  This is actually, to me, the simplest and purest adaptation for a career from what residency is.

What do you like about what you do?

I’ll answer that 180 degrees to the opposite.  I really don’t like clinic.  I like the fact that there no appointments, people are sick and you can make a difference hopefully.  And I don’t have to worry with the staffing and the major overhead concerns of the clinic practice.

What do you dislike about this job?

I have no control over the time that people come in.  So you may have a day like today, where you go in at 9:00 or 10:00, and you run for three or four hours, and then at 1:00, 2:00, you’re kind of done, sitting around twiddling your thumbs and then you get busy again at 4:30 or 5:00, after you’ve had some down time in the middle of the day.  That’s also common with emergency medicine.  Parts of your shift are hopelessly slow and then all of a sudden, somebody pulls back the curtain and you’re overwhelmed.

And basically, we have a deal where you take what gets put on your plate during your assigned shift.  So on the slow days at the end of your shift, you’re done.  On a very different day, you may stay several hours after your shift. So that’s one of the dislikes, the lack of predictability.  On the other hand, as long as people are sick and needing to be in the hospital, it’s interesting enough to stay. You’re just done when the job is done.

How do you make money/or how are you compensated in this career?

Hospitalists in general are paid two ways.  One, are employees and have a guaranteed salary and benefits package, and then the others are fee for service.  So you show up, take care of what’s there, and you bill and live off the collections, minus overhead.  And then there are a few people that have kind of blended that, and this is us, where you have a guaranteed base, not a whole lot, but then you have a productivity type bonus structure, so that if you see hardly anyone, up to whatever the agreed amount of patients is, then you make the guaranteed minimum.  But if you see more than that, then you share in the profits or the collections for the patients above the minimum amount.  We have a guaranteed amount of money that we’re going to make every year, and then we have productivity model and it’s a month-to-month thing, so for the month of September, if we see X number of patients and X is below the hard deck, then we make a guaranteed amount of money, and if X is above the agreed upon number, then we’ll get paid on the productivity.

How much money do you make as a hospitalist?

The guaranteed is about $250,000 and the productivity above and beyond that is variable depending on numbers, but in this job, I’ve made as little as $180,000 and as much as $450,000.  It just depends on volume.  When you’re making $450,000, you hate your job.

You’re basically working like a pack mule so, there’s a happy medium somewhere between $275,000 and $325,000, where we feel like we’re making a good living and we’re doing a reasonable amount of work, where you can really take care of people.  All those years where we’re making north of $400,000, we’re so busy the quality suffers.

How much money do you make starting out as a hospitalist?

I think you can expect to come out of residency and sign a contract around $200,000.  It’ll be better in competitive markets and a little less in academic markets that are saturated.  As a general rule, you should anticipate or hope for, and not settle for anything that doesn’t have a 2 in front of it.

Would you say there are any perks associated with your job?

Sure.  The flexibility of making our own schedule is a real perk, even though it’s pretty inflexible after we set it up.  We can set it up – with partners, I own the company.  I get the pride and feel of ownership there, so that’s kind of a perk.

What education or skills are needed to become a Hospitalist?

For internal medicine, it’s four years in college, four years in medical school and a minimum three year residency.  As far as skills, it’s mostly a cognitive profession.  It’s not very procedural, so while we do some minor procedures, the skill set is mostly cognitive.

We’re mainly thinking, planning, managing cases, working through diagnostic dilemmas, but not scopes and scalpels and that sort of stuff.

What would you say is most challenging about what you do?

For us, it is how sick the patients are.  The days are gone where you can put someone in the hospital just because they have something minor wrong.  So by the time now that anybody qualifies for admission, they tend to be very sick, so managing a multiplicity of disease and very sick patients is a big challenge,

What would you say is most rewarding about you do?

Watching people get better, absolutely.  Watching a plan come together – making a diagnosis, putting the treatment plan together, and watching somebody get well.

What advice would you offer someone considering this career?

To do dentistry instead. (laughs)

Within the whole field of medicine, don’t pick your specialty based on the hours, the procedures, or the reimbursement.  Pick it based on what you think you can dedicate a lot of time to, because nobody in this profession that does it well, does it a little bit.

How much time off do you get or take?

Basically, we have 12 weeks off a year right now. But that’s 12 weeks, and not weekends on the other weeks.  That’s 12 seven to nine day runs, but you don’t get 12 weeks vacation plus all the weekends and holidays and everything else like a normal job.  So all the days just kind of run together and the calendar day doesn’t really matter.  If I employ you right now, you’re going to work all but 84 days of the year.

And arguably, you get 104 days off if you just take weekends, and then if you take holidays, that’s probably another 14 more, and if you take two weeks of vacation, that’s 10 more, and you get to 140-150 pretty quick.  We work all but 84.

In a small group, trading out a call for a day or two is very, very difficult, so I pretty much say “If it’s important to you for me to be at the wedding, then call and ask me what day I’m off.”  If it doesn’t matter, then just tell me what the day is and I’ll tell if you if I’ll be there or not.

With some of the practice guys, it’s work four days a week, and they might complain about not having much vacation time, and how nice it must be to have nine days off at a time.  I always ask them when the last time they pulled 19 straight days was and tell them I’m going to do that 16 times this year.

What is a common misconception people have about what you do?

That you make a ton of money right out of the gate.  Truth is, they start low on the pay scale with a lot of student debt.  That’s probably one.  Another is that we’re supposed to get it right all the time.  A lot of things are, in my profession at least, are very much trial and error. There’s some diagnostic dilemmas that baffle us and I think people maybe don’t understand sometimes that we have to work through that.

And then maybe a misconception that a doctor is a doctor is a doctor, whereas I know very little about the surgical subspecialties and some of the things like cosmetic surgery and ophthalmology.  Hopefully, when it comes to diabetes, heart failure and internal medicine, I know a whole lot, where the eye doctor doesn’t have any idea. So I think the idea is that “because you all went to med school, you all have the same fund of knowledge” and certainly you learn how to be a doctor in residency, not in med school, and your fund of knowledge is dependent on your residency and experience, not on the anatomy course you took in your first year of med school.

What are you goals and dreams for the future in this career?

I have a couple.  One is to grow my practice to be big and successful, and respected.  Another is to have a management or administrative arm of the practice in the career so it’s not all bedside.  And then, I’d like to be one of those guys who plays his whole career for one team, so I can start and finish in the same place, and that’s really uncommon.  About 50% of the physicians in this specialty switch their place of practice in the first four years.

And I think that’s because for the last ten years, this career has been kind of sexy and so the offers are bigger and better in other places. So if you’re willing to move, you can change your pay scale.  And the other thing is that people change because they start in small groups and the demand of call in a small group is very taxing, and so there is a significant allure of a bigger group, which more shared calls.

What else would you like people to know about what you do?

Specific to the profession, it is the fastest growing specialty in medicine ever.  The next closest is emergency medicine, which was kind of championed in the ‘70s, and we’re really at a clip of 400% faster than emergency medicine grew.  There’s somewhere between 25,000-30,000 hospitalists in a specialty that’s 10 years old and that takes several years to train somebody.  So it’s really, really kind of a rocketship past the moon as far as the growth of this particular sector.

I don’t know where the demand curve is going to plateau, but the supply is being met by a whole lot of people who would normally specialize, but because the money and the lifestyle are fairly attractive, instead of doing a GI fellowship,or rheumatology, or cardiology, if you have the opportunity to get out after three years and become a hospitalist and have a decent lifestyle and decent salary and good opportunities to grow in the field.  So, I have a feeling that the rush to this specialty is probably over.  We’re starting to hear that in some of the big cities, a really desirable job is hard to find. That’s new in the last couple of years. There’s a few markets that are very desirable – jobs in very desirable locations are starting to be full.  But for the most part, there is still lots of need.

What do you do for a living?

I’m a general dentist.

How would you describe what you do?

I do anything that pertains to surgery, cleaning, hygiene, or fillings in someone’s mouth.

What does your work entail?

I do fillings and root canals and surgical extractions, regular extractions, removal of wisdom teeth, removal of canines, soft tissues etc.

What’s a typical work week like?

Typical for me and I would say for most dentists is Monday – Thursday, 8 a.m. until 5:30 or 6. I usually end up working through lunch too, because that’s my personal preference; if I’m going to be there, I want to be there working.  90 percent of my work is with patients, either doing an exam or a procedure, with the rest of the time working on office stuff.

How did you get started?

Dentistry is in my family, and that is how I got introduced to it. I went to school and started taking my science courses and I really liked them, and also I liked the interaction with people and helping them in some sort of capacity; I liked it that dentistry really allowed me to do that.  And it is a trade also.  I wanted a job that required a license because I feel like when you’re licensed to do something, you will always have a job.

What do you like about what you do?

I would say first and foremost, being able to talk to people or getting to be around and help people.  I also like working with my hands. And I’m not an artist, by any means, but you have to have a good eye and be good with your hands.   You have to know what looks natural and what doesn’t, which is really funny because a lot of patients don’t want what looks natural; they want what looks fake, which we hate:).

You have to have good patient interaction because at the end of the day no one knows how good of a dentist you are but they do know how your bedside manner is and how you treat them.

Sometimes they’ll say, “oh my gosh this isn’t perfectly straight” and you tell them,  “look at my tooth, my tooth is natural and it’s not perfectly straight, that’s why it looks good”.

What do you dislike?

I really don’t think there’s anything I don’t like about dentistry. I really don’t. I like it that much. But sometimes I feel like I have to be strict and I feel like I’m giving lectures to patients[when they guidance about tooth care or are doing bad things to their teeth].  I don’t like conflict so that’s kind of hard for me. But, at that same time, when it must be said, it has to be said.

How do you make money/or how are you compensated?

It’s fee for service.

How much money do you make as a general dentist?

I make around $200,000 – $250,000 after taxes. You are very well reimbursed and you can make up to a million. It just depends. It depends on how good you are, where you practice. But, I would say the range is like $200,000 to a million.

Somebody who owns their own practice in a small town can make more than someone in a city, because when you’re in a big city the market is saturated. I just feel like you can do better when you’re in a smaller town and because you end up doing more of your procedures, you can make more. In a city, you end up referring a lot of patients, but  in a small town you can’t, you’re forced to do everything.

How much money do you make starting out?

The average salary, I think, is about $170,000, but that is looking at someone who has not been working for 10 years.  People that have established practices make much more.  On the other hand teachers and professors in dentistry don’t make that much. People in public health don’t make that much. My first year I made $200,000 after taxes.

What education or skills are needed to become a Dentist?

Most dental schools require a four-year undergraduate degree. I don’t think you necessarily have to have that,  but you do have to have the requirements, so that usually means you have a major in biology and at least a minor in chemistry, so you have to take a bunch of sciences. You have to take the DAT which is the admissions exam and you have to have a certain GPA and you have to have a certain score on that to get an interview.  Then dental school is four years. After dental school, you can choose a specialization, and depending on which specialization you decide to take, it’s a two to six-year program afterwards.

As for skills, I would say you have to be good with people, especially as a general  dentist; as a specialist I don’t think you have to be as good;  but you have to have good patient interaction because at the end of the day no one knows how good of a dentist you are but they do know how your bedside manner is and how you treat them.  The better you are at that, that better you are as a dentist. You may have the best hand skills in the world, but patients won’t appreciate that, because they don’t always know.

What is most challenging about what you do?

Working in a very tiny, dark space.  And,  there’s fluids where you have to keep things dry. Sometimes it can be really challenging, especially when a patient can’t open their mouth.

Also, people are very, very, very scared of the dentist and I probably hear that 10 times a day: “it’s not you, I really like you but I just hate the dentist and I’m so scared and I had this one bad experience.” Seriously, every other patient, I get a story like that. It doesn’t bother me, but I’ve talked to some older dentists, and they sometimes get a chip on their shoulder.

What is most rewarding?

I guess, if I’m being completely honest I would say helping people and being financially successful. You’re very well reimbursed for what we do. Also, having the freedom of not being on call. Unlike some other medical specialties, you aren’t in the position where you have someone’s life in your hands. The biggest thing you can do is ruin someone’s tooth, but even then you always have options. Although it can be stressful at times and you do have to know what you’re doing at the end of the day but it’s not like you’re in the middle of somebody’s guts and they’re not going to wake up.

What advice would you offer someone considering this career?

To do well in school and to do a bunch of shadowing to see if it’s something they really want to do; it’s hard to know until you really get into it, because you don’t start drilling and doing all of that until you really start working with patients. You have no way of really knowing if you’re going to get along with it. The other advice is to have a good GPA, of at least 3.6 on science courses.  Your science GPA is what is important.

Are there any perks associated with your job:

You are your own boss, and you make a decent living. I feel like it’s still a respected field. You can choose your own hours, you can work as hard or as little as you want. You are always learning. For the rest of my life I will continue learning about something I like, which I think is good.

I love it, I love dentistry. It’s the best thing in the whole world. My friends and I talk about it all the time. We feel that we’re so lucky.

How much time off do you get/take?

I take every Friday off, which comes to about six weeks a year.

I can also take vacations. Right now I don’t take off very much because I take off Fridays and that’s enough for me. But, later, I’ll probably take two weeks at a time.

What is a common misconception people have about what you do?

A lot of people who have never had a toothache think all we do is exams and cleanings. If they have never had a filling, root canal, or an extraction they probably don’t realize how much we do. And others think we’re scary, which is a common misconception about dentists.  I probably hear that ten times a day “it’s not you, I really like you but I just hate the dentist and I’m so scared and I had this one bad experience”.

What are your goals/dreams for the future?

To be the very best that I can be. Seriously, I want to be the best dentist. I want to know everything; I want to be very well educated. I already own the practice but I still want to go back to school and want to specialize and get the continued education.

What else would you like people to know about what you do?

I really do think it’s the best job in the world. When I was in college, there were six of us that were best friends; three of us were biology majors and one of them wanted to go to medical school and one of them wanted to do research and I convinced both of them to go to dental school; today, they think it’s the best decision they ever made. You don’t have to be on call, and when you have a family you can still work as much or as little as you want, and you are going to be well-reimbursed for your work.

What do you do for a living?

I’m a statistical geneticist.

How would you describe what you do to someone?

I’m in charge of analyzing and delivering technology that implement DNA into an animal breeding program. I’m also responsible for describing genetics or identifying the uniqueness of different lines and different breeds of chickens that we have in the company.

What does your work entail?

My job entails a large portion of analysis so I would be in charge of analyzing genomic sequences where you sequence the genome of an animal and you analyze it for mutations that could be used to associate with certain traits.

We’ll sequence animals and we’ll look for things like positive selection, looking for evidence of say a selection event due to an altercation such as increased meat production in a chicken or increased milk production in a cow.

[The misconception is]That the work that we do is genetically modifying DNA or genetically engineering chickens and that we’re creating some Frankenstein chicken. There’s not a lot of monkeying around with any of that. We’re very interested in having the bird healthy and we’re not trying to do anything to them that is out of the ordinary.

We’ll look for the genome that has changed due to a positive selection. We’ll also sequence and genome type animals that are diseased.  So we’ll sequence or genome type the animals that die and the animals that survived and look for certain mutations that are specific to either population and see if those can be associated with that disease due to susceptibility.

We’re also doing a lot of gene mapping projects where we’ll look for certain genes involved with economic traits like feed efficiency.  We also look at environmental things that try to reduce the impact of farming on the environment such as nitrogen production so those would be some of the gene mapping things that we do.

Then we’ll also have to look at how chickens are all related to each other so wild ancestors like green jungle fowl that are all based in China and Indonesia and red jungle fowl, turkeys. We’ll look at how their genomes are arranged into chromosomes and how they’ve changed over time to see really how evolution is shaped with natural selection as opposed to domestication.

The ultimate goal is to reduce the impact on the environment, produce a better quality and more robust chicken. We’re trying to make one that is less susceptible to disease that has less issues and something that really reduces its ecological footprints on the Earth.

What’s a typical workweek look like for you?

Typically I’ll go in and I will do a lot of programming really. I’ll get info from various sources and external partners that do a lot of the lab work for us or from lab techs that we have in house.  So I don’t do a lot of lab work myself except on special occasions.  I analyze those data sets for quality control and remove any curious results or anything. We’ll then analyze the data and apply this to try and determine whether or not we’ve got genetics. I’m usually sitting in front of the computer, not too much lab work.

How did you get started in this career?

I started off with a basic biology degree. I then went on to conservation genetics which I found very interesting. Evolutionary genetics was something I was in to.  And then I got into working with domestic animals which allowed me to apply some of those same theories to a more relevant population.

What do you like about what you do?

It’s a challenging field. There’s a lot of advancing going on in genetics at the moment. It’s really changing from a lab-based discipline to more of an information science so you have to be multidisciplinary. You have to know interior programming. You have to know your basic biology and it allows you to ask questions that are fundamental how we change and how animals evolve, what happens when you apply certain pressures to animals and how animals adapt to environmental challenges or challenges by viruses.  The fact that it’s so intellectually stimulating really attracted me to it.

What do you dislike about it?

It can be fairly high pressure. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of people that can do the analysis so there’s a lot of work to be done and a pretty demanding work load so it can be fairly stressful at times.

The ultimate goal is to reduce the impact on the environment, produce a better quality and more robust chicken. We’re trying to make one that is less susceptible to disease that has less issues and something that really reduces its ecological footprints on the Earth.

How do you make money or how are you compensated in this job?

I’m a salaried employee and that comes with benefits and things like that.

How much money do you make as a geneticist?

I make $115,000 a year.

How much money did you make starting out?

When I first started my first job it was about $65,000 and then I probably when to $85,000 and now I’m making $114,000.

Are there any perks associated with this job?

A lot are overseas travel. You get to go to national and international conferences. You are paid pretty well and I think it’s good work.

What education or skills are needed to do be a geneticist?

Education would be a PhD in genetics or statistics or animal breeding.

As far as skills I would say probably computational—computer programming would be desired like programming in some sort of language like python or pearl, knowledge of the Linux operating system, statistics, and obviously a biology background.

What would you say is most challenging about what you do?

I’m working for a very large company you know that is pretty much in 50% of the world markets. The challenge in a field like genetics where your company is trying to swap their breeding program over from a traditional approach to a more modern approach is that things could go wrong quite quickly. If, for instance, the wrong gene is selected or say the genes that you identify in one population don’t seem to do the same thing in the next population and if people aren’t monitoring what’s happening very quickly on the ground you could quite rapidly shift the animals the wrong direction where they’re less healthy instead of more, or at least as healthy as they were.

You don’t really want to mess that up.

What would you say is most rewarding about what you do?

Well if everything works out accordingly then you’re responsible for changing the way that we breed animals and that has a very large impact on reducing the environmental impact and making food more accessible and potentially more affordable to people that are malnourished or in poor countries.  So that would have a big social impact and potentially an environmental one on the reduced impact on the environment associated with high production farming.

What advice would you offer someone considering this career?

Do some work in companies that work in animal breeding or in genetics whether it be some summer work or volunteer work if possible. There’s always internships available so really proactive with that.  Going that extra yard will really put you ahead because a little bit of experience and getting to know people on a face-to-face in a very small industry like animal breeding is going to have a pretty big impact.

How much time do you get or take off in this job?

Pretty flexible, I get two weeks off per year but work it can be flexible with days off here and there as long as you get your work done.

What would you say is a common misconception people have about what you do?

That the work that we do is genetically modifying DNA or genetically engineering chickens and that we’re creating some Frankenstein chicken. There’s not a lot of monkeying around with any of that. We’re very interested in having the bird healthy and we’re not trying to do anything to them that is out of the ordinary.  We’re just trying to identify the bad genes that are associated with diseases or good genes associated with increased efficiency in the population.  Really all we’re doing is trying to identify what currently is in the bird and trying to essentially increase the frequency of that as they’ve done over thousands of years of traditional animal breeding. The only difference is that we’re becoming more accurate in our ability to identify which animal is the best and really increase the accuracy in which we carry out selection.

What are your goals and dreams for the future in this career?

To really change the way we do animal breeding, to further my knowledge, to challenge myself as far as science and as far as my career is concerned, to grow myself intellectually, and to make an impact on the breeding program.

What else would you like people to know about what you do?

It’s a fun job, it’s challenging but there are a lot of rewards. It’s fun and you’ll have a blast.  Biologists and geneticists like to get down.

What do you do for a living?

I am a Registered Nurse.

How would you describe what you do?

I take care of patients who are recovering from a wide range of illnesses or from recent surgery.

What does your work entail?

I’m responsible for making sure that the patient’s pain is under control, that they receive their prescribed medicine on time, that their vital signs are stable, that the doctor’s orders are being followed and I act as a liaison between the doctor and the patient’s family.

What is a typical workweek like for you?

I work three, twelve-hour shifts and I’m stuck on night shift right now.  The night shift is really hard.  The money is good but the rest of your family is scared to call during the day because they’re scared that I’ll be sleeping.  But you kind of get used to it and then eventually you get to work days.  So I work 3-twelve hour shifts that usually end up being about 13 or 14 hours because you have to stay late sometimes to finish charting.  It ends up almost being a 40 hour work week.

How did you get started?

I actually started by going to college and getting a psychology degree and with that degree I was only able to get a job as a receptionist.

I knew a psychology degree doesn’t really do anything unless you go for your PhD or Masters so I really wanted to help people but I didn’t feel like I was really getting that opportunity and my sister was in nursing school and loved it so I went too.

I went to a school that offered a one year accelerated Bachelor’s degree in nursing program.

It was twelve months because I had already had my Bachelor’s degree.  I didn’t have to take all the other classes and so I got a second Bachelor’s.

It was a crazy year. It was probably the most difficult year of my life but it was worth it.

What do you like about what you do?

The best part is seeing patients get better and knowing that I played a small role in that. We get a lot of patients who are in a lot of pain after their surgery which can be pretty stressful trying to get their pain under control.  But once they’re comfortable and smiling it does feel really good to know that I helped them out.

What do you dislike?

I wish I had a lot more time to spend with my patients. There are some busy nights where I’ll run into a room to see something and my patient wants to tell me a joke or a story about her grandkids and it absolutely breaks my heart to have to interrupt them and leave because the patient in the room down the hall is throwing up and another patient is crying in pain and another patient has to go to the bathroom.  So there’s sometimes that there is so much going on that I feel like I can’t give my patients the attention that they desire and that I want to.

How do you make money or how are you compensated?

Nurses are all hourly so they’re not a salary. It’s not a salary position unless you’re in management.

How much money do you make as a registered nurse?

In Kansas City it seems like most hospitals for new graduate nurses start around $21 or $22 an hour and then every year the salary goes up by a little bit less than a $1 a year. I’ve been a nurse for 5 years and I’m making $26 an hour.

Hospital nurses tend to make more than other types of nurses. At doctor’s offices they only make like $18 or $19 an hour even if you are a registered nurse. So you definitely get more in the hospital and then hospitals usually pay night shift workers a shift differential which for me is $3 an hour so I get my base pay and then for the night hours I get $3 more an hour and I also get additional pay.  If it’s a weekend you get $2 an hour extra.

How much did you make starting out in this career?

I started out at $22 an hour maybe but that was in TX.

What education or skills that are needed to be a Registered Nurse?

Most hospitals require a registered nurse degree but you can do that two ways. There’s actually a Bachelor’s degree which is called a BSN and some hospitals prefer that and pay more; other hospitals don’t distinguish between a diploma nurse, which is an RN without the Bachelor’s, and the Bachelor’s.

What is the most challenging about what you do?

The patient load and the severity of their sickness.

If I have five patients and I have one patient who demands a lot of time because they’re in a lot of pain or they’re really sick then my other four patients might not get the attention that they deserve.  So I’ve learned time management skills are just absolutely critical and even then sometimes I’ll have my whole night figured out and something will come up and throw everything off.  So it’s definitely a skill learning to prioritize and juggle my plans for the night I guess. That takes a long time to learn.

What is the most rewarding for you?

The patients, just getting to know the patients and their families and seeing them get better.

What advice would you offer someone that’s considering this career?

The best advice I could offer would be to contact a hospital in the area and see if there’s any way that you can shadow a nurse for a full shift because I think that a lot of people watch TV shows and see doctors doing all the work and they think that’s the way things actually are and it’s not like that. Nursing is a very, very physical job. It’s a lot of thinking and it’s a lot of work.  I love it but I’ve met a lot of people who I think if they would have actually seen what it was really like before they went to school that they might have chosen something different.

I don’t want to sound discouraging by any means but I think it’s a good idea to actually shadow someone to see what it will be like.

How much time off do you get or take?

Well we technically have a 12 hour shift. It’s only three days a week so every week you get four days off and then it seems like hospitals give you a lot of paid time off because you don’t get holidays paid.  With most jobs you get paid when you don’t have to work on a holiday but hospitals they’re open every day all day so you sometimes have to work holidays so we do rack up a lot of paid time off and so it just seems like occasionally I’ll be able to take a day or two off which is really nice.

What is a common misconception that people have about what you do?

That nurses just give medicine and they don’t do much else.

What are your goals or dreams for the future?

I guess to eventually to try different areas of nursing and just see what is all out there because that’s one of the best things about nursing, there are so many different areas that if you get bored with something or something isn’t the right fit you can try a different specialty, or you can go from being a floor nurse to an operating room nurse and it’s almost like a different profession.  So you have a lot of options I guess. In the future I would like to try out different things and see what the best fit is for me.

What else would you like people to know about what you do?

That’s a good question. To be nice to their nurses! No, I’m kidding.  It’s a very rewarding job, you learn a lot, it’s constantly evolving, that people should only go into nursing if it’s their true passion.

And that if you really do want to help people and you are interest in medicine that it is a very rewarding and exciting career.

What do you do for a living?

I’m a retail fashion buyer for a major American department store.

How would you describe what you do?

At the most basic level the buyer ensures that the correct merchandise is in a store at the correct time with the correct quantities to satisfy the customer. The success of a buyer is quantified by achievement of retail sales and gross margin goals.

What does your work entail?

A buyer’s in charge of a product category and you basically review the marketplace landscape per your particular customer bases or what particular customer base you may be looking to capture. Then you go out and you determine what the correct product is for your category. Then it involves lots of negotiations.

You find a vendor. You create a partnership that’s mutually beneficial and create an assortment with them, again to cater to your customer. You plan the financial aspect of the from top to bottom at a seasonal level and year level and plan your goals for the big picture.

You find the partner that you want to purchase the styles from. Then you purchase the styles. As a buyer you’re in charge of all the merchandising aspects, of choosing the merchandise, choosing what it looks like on the floor, and designing the floor landscape.

You’re in charge of all the product information that goes to the store and any and all communication to the store about your product.

Buyer’s are in charge of all the advertising and marketing too. Any promotional cadences, when you see a special on television, if they say that this is going to be $49.99 and it’s usually $79.99. The buyer’s the one that chose that. You have to do a financial forecast, understand the market and what’s happening when you have product category lists.

You have to really enjoy business management first and product second and understand that in your career, if you really are truly a good merchant, you should be able to buy widgets, gadgets, and designer clothing exactly the same. You should be as good a buyer buying staple guns for the Home Depot as you are buying Couture.

But the other thing as a buyer is you’re an executive in that corporation, especially as a department store buyer, you’re a top-level executive. Managing a large team is a huge part of your job. You routinely sit with other top level executives and report what your 2 to 3 years development goals are, who’s getting promoted when to what position on your team, etc.

How did you get started?

As a senior in high school I job shadowed a buyer at the local luxury department store and was very interested in the dynamics of the role. While majoring in retail merchandising (a combination business/fashion degree,) I took a job as a sales associate at a department store and took the role very seriously, working about 35 hours a week. My school required a formal internship junior year and the department store agreed to move me to New York to work in their flagship store for a semester as a store-line management intern. After showing strong performance results I was granted a second internship in the buying office the next summer. This buying office internship, in addition to 6 years of part-time retail experience, opened many doors. Upon college graduation, I was given offers in big-box, specialty and department store buying offices.

What do you like about what you do?

I like almost every aspect of my job but most importantly I like how dynamic it is. While there is certainly an “average” day, most days are filled with a variety of both analytical and creative work. I am regularly challenged to solve a problem that I have not come across before or develop a new business opportunity that I have identified. The ability to travel (to trade shows and visiting stores) keeps me connected to the “results” portion of my job. It is very satisfying to see a project that my team developed come to fruition in a store.

What do you dislike?

There is a lot of pressure that comes with buying for a large department store. Both internally and externally, there are a lot of relationships to manage and many people with high expectations. My decisions affect thousands of people around the world and can make a vendor’s company thrive or fail. I have an ethical obligation to carefully manage these relationships to ensure both parties benefit.

How do you make money/how are you compensated?

Annual salary and a bonus if sales margin and turn goals are achieved.

How much money do you make as a retail fashion buyer?

$130,000

How much money do you make starting out?

$42,000. The major “raises” in buying are the jumps from assistant buyer (3-4 years) to associate buyer (2 years)

What education or skill are needed to do this?

Minimum four year degree in business or retail merchandising is best. Dependent upon varied professional experience it is a role that can be worked into. I know a retail CEO that was a history major!

Required skill set includes strong analytical skills (both quantitative and qualitative,) leadership qualities, excellent relationship building talent and the ability to form and execute a business strategy.

What is most rewarding about this job?

Seeing my assortment vision fully executed in a store (and knowing the customer likes what I did because I’m making sales plan!)

In addition, I have the extraordinary luck to be working with amazing partners. The retail world is full of talented, eccentric, exciting people who work hard but have so much fun doing it!

What is most challenging?

“Change is life,” a term especially true in the retail world. The minute you are comfortable in your job and feel like you know what you are doing your company, role, team, location, etc will change! The second challenge of the field is the competitive nature of the industry. A lot of people want your job and are willing to do it for less you make! Finally, you have to enjoy working in a field that is 90percent women. This is a benefit and a drawback. It can be a very dynamic and supportive environment or a very dramatic and catty one.

What advice would you offer someone considering this career?

Think long and hard before you decide want to do this. I see girls that I mentor that are like “Oh, my god. I so want to be a fashion buyer. It will be so cool.”

You’ve got about five years before you ever touch product, before you ever see product.

To remember that maybe in your first year 70% of the job is analytical and execution. You have to really enjoy business management first and product second and understand that in your career, if you really are truly a good merchant, you should be able to buy widgets, gadgets, and designer clothing exactly the same. You should be as good a buyer buying staple guns for the Home Depot as you are buying Couture.

You really should love to buy nuts and bolts the same way you buy high fashion. You have to be able to understand any sort of product that comes along and learn business models first and learn product second.

How much time off do you get/take?

I have been with my company 5 years and therefore earn four weeks of vacation in addition to national holidays. When I started, I received two weeks vacation. It is difficult to take more then one full week off at a time because of management responsibilities. It should be noted that the day after thanksgiving is often a required work day in a buying office. One “perk” of the fashion industry in NYC is that most companies give half-day Fridays in the summer.

What’s a common misconception people have about what you do?

That it’s very glamorous. Maybe 5 out of 200 major style buyers in my company get to do anything remotely like cool, as far as meeting celebrities, going to fashions shows, unique product offering and whatnot. It happens, and it’s fun when it does, but it is not as often as people think.

What are your goals and dreams for the future?

I would like to move into a multinational buying role where I can utilize my skills as a department store buyer along with some of my passion for travel.

What do you do for a living?

I’m a medical aesthetician.

How would you describe what you do?

We focus on skincare, and skincare could be anything from improving the way you look to anything in general to do with the skin. Where I work we have a Medical Director who is a plastic surgeon, plus a couple of physician assistants that do all the injectables. My job is basically to do the consult, peels, facials and treatments, and any laser treatment related to the skin.

We have lasers for pigmentation, laser hair removal, fractural scars, IPL, and lasers for skin rejuvenation.

What is a typical workweek like for you?

On a daily basis I will see clients for a variety of treatments. Depending on the treatments I could be with a client from fifteen minutes to sometimes three hours in one day. It all depends what they are getting done that day.

How did you get started?

My first love is skincare and skin health. So I went to aesthetic school and got my license from New York City, and then you apply for different positions in the city. I just happened to apply for a job that related to medical skincare. I fell in love with it. I really never considered medical aesthetics until I started working for a medical spa. But I love the results and improvements you see in your patients. They are really amazing.

What do you like about what you do?

In my field I get to meet a lot of people from all different walks of life; captains of industries, bartenders, celebrities, etc. I meet a wide range of interesting people. I really love what I do. And I feel like sometimes I am a counselor, because they feel very comfortable in the environment and we are covered under HIPPA so we are not allowed to reveal any personal information so people tend to talk and share.

Is there anything you dislike?

Well, the one thing about this job that I am in right now is that you have to work weekends. So you have to be willing to give up some weekends and one night. But I can’t complain because there are some places where you basically only take vacations when the Dr’s on vacation. Here I have a little bit of wriggle room.

How do you make money or how are you compensated?

A lot of people in my position make an hourly wage, as well as a commission from sales, like product sales.

How much do you make as an aesthetician?

Depends on also how many hours you work, because I am on an hourly wage. If I work twenty hours I am compensated for that twenty hours, plus commission, so you could be anywhere from $40,000 to $100,000 if you have a really really good year. But the salary varies, it all depends on how much you work

How much did you make starting out as an aesthetician?

When I first started I made $25 dollars per hour.

What education or skills are needed to do this kind of career?

Well in different states there are different requirements. In New York City you don’t need to have a license background in lasers, but you do need some education and background in skincare and have a beauty license.

In Texas and in Florida I think you do need a medical degree to operate lasers, so different states require you to get a different education.

And if you have a background in sales that would be really great too.

What is the most challenging about what you do?

I think being able to get along with everybody you work with, because with small office politics you have to get along with different types of personalities.

What is the most rewarding for you?

Being able to help people, and I know that sounds kind of cheesy but I’ll give you an example. One day I had a woman who came in with horrible acne, and I don’t know if you have ever had acne before but it is a very irritating condition, and it is a chronic condition, and basically she had seen many dermatologists and they had put her on several types of oral medication but nothing had really worked. So we went over her options and came up with a program that really improved and reduced the acne on her skin, and it really changed her life. If you have acne it makes you not want to go out, you don’t want to see people, you just want to hide. And by just changing the way she looked and felt about herself it just made a world of difference. And it makes me feel good and so thankful that I got to be a little bit of help in that department.

And I grew up with acne so I know how that feels, I had it until my mid-twenties so I feel for them, I really do, and being able to help just a little bit feels great.

What advice would you offer someone considering this kind of career?

If you want a career just to make money this is not for you. You really have to like what you do, you really do. The compensation comes later, but in the beginning you really have to love what you do. And you have to be mature enough to work with different people of different backgrounds.

How much time off do you get or take?

Luckily when we first started at the place I work it closed on Sundays and Mondays, so those were my normal days off. It is different for everyone. There are places that are open very very late and open every weekend, so it depends where you work. Some people might only on weekdays, if you work in a Doctors office or a plastic surgery office, because they only do surgeries Monday to Friday and they are closed on the weekends. And some people who work in more of a spa environment have to work just about every weekend. And sometimes in the evening until nine o’clock, so it all depends where you work as well.

What is a common misconception that people have about what you do?

That all we do is facials. And that we get treatments all the time. Which is so untrue. I don’t even remember the last time I had a treatment, maybe the beginning of the year, January or sometime. We never have time to treat ourselves, it is very rare. If I wanted a facial I would have to be free and my co-worker would have to be free, and most of us don’t want to stay after work to get treatments because we are so tired at the end of the day.

What are your goals and dreams for the future?

There is so much technology that is out there right now and it is always improving, and I look forward to working with some of the newer technologies. There is new technologies out there for cellulite, to reduce cellulite and stretch marks, and that is really interesting to me.

What else would you like people to know about what you do?

Just that the biggest misconception is that people think all we do is have treatments all the time, but that is so not true.
I also want people to know who want to pursue this career is that number one, they have to do a lot of the research themselves, and second they have to be willing to work weeknights and weekends.