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Side business

Hello,

I am a foundation year 1 doctor with an interest in orthopaedic surgery. I also have a passion for entrepreneurship and innovation. My ideas are not related to medicine e.g. Stocks and shares/ apps (games), properties, restaurant, online marketing.

I was wondering can I have a side business/ businesses whilst hoping to go in a competitive training field.

Cheers for the help.

Reply 1

JOO93

Original post by Jamesboy11

In short yes. A consultant I worked for had a business and was a general surgeon. All very possible you just have to be committed.

Reply 2

seaholme

Think it would definitely be very challenging though, even if you wanted to spend all your free time working on something else. The hours are long and so your free time may not be convenient for running another business - like you'll rarely be free during the day to organise anything, take calls etc. you'd need a full time deputy of some kind to manage all that sort of stuff.

I struggle just to do basic life stuff sometimes ahah. The shops are always shut by the time I'm home, banks are never open etc.!

Reply 3

MonteCristo

I will usually say "it's possible" to anything but I'm going to go off piste this time...

I had a lot of extracurricular interests at medical school and was strongly advised by one of the professors not to pursue a surgical career. His advice was to choose a speciality with a relatively short training programme that can be easily worked around shifts/sessions. He recommended general practice but other possibilities might (I guess) include anaesthetics, radiology, and emergency medicine.

It's not so much that you don't have time to pursue other things (although this is true to some extent), it's more that training drags on for a long time. It's hard to develop a family life (nevermind a successful business) when you're being sent to a different hospital (perhaps 1.5 hours commute) every six months.

I obviously ignored his advice and plunged headlong into surgical training. I have kept up many of my extracurricular interests and they are largely thriving. My surgical career has however stalled and, despite finishing medical school in 2010, my CCT date is currently set at 2025 (!!). Friends in the same cohort are now being appointed as radiology consultants and others became GP principals a few years ago. Once you are fully trained you can be free to work however you like (e.g. 4 days a week if the business is slow, 2 days a week if things are going well).

You absolutely can do T&O and other things but something will suffer at some stage. Unless you can't imagine yourself doing anything other than being a surgeon, give some thought to the advice that I ignored the best part of a decade ago.

(edited 6 years ago)

Reply 4

nexttime

Excellent advice by MonteCristo.

You can run a bit of business on the side, but it will need to be something you can do with very limited and very unreliable available hours. For example, you will not be able to reliably take calls at work - that would be a problem for many business ventures.

Given the problems with medical training and uncertainty of the future i would kind of encourage cultivating an 'out', if you will. But only if you think you can fit it in alongside 48 official weekly hours, probably a handful of unofficial weekly hours, additional time to do audits and exams for your surgical career, and up to 1.5 hours commute time each way.

Good luck.

Original post by MonteCristo

He recommended general practice but other possibilities might (I guess) include anaesthetics, radiology, and emergency medicine..

And psych for sure! 6 year training program but if all jobs are like my job, you could basically run a business full time whilst sitting on the ward also doing your medical duties it was that quiet :p: