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Christopher H. Loo, MD-PhD: Today I have a really special guest, Dr. John Jurica. And he is the founder, producer, CEO of the NonClinical Careers, Physician NonClinical Careers Podcast. And he's going to talk all about podcasting, non-clinical career options. He has a Facebook group, with a significant following, as well as his new app venture that he launched jointly with Dr. Tom Davis known as NewScript. So without much ado, John, welcome.
Dr. John Jurica, MD, MPH, CPE: Hello, Dr. Loo, glad to see you and be here today.
Christopher H. Loo, MD-PhD: Yeah, I was just I know, we were talking in the backroom earlier. And I was like I started my career on the pod on your, on your podcast, and I and I was just like, I've done 30 Something episodes. And I was like, I realized I didn't have my, my, the, the host that made my career. So it's time to give back. So I'm happy to have you on the show and welcome.
Dr. John Jurica, MD, MPH, CPE: Well, I don't know if I made your career, maybe a little bit of inspiration. But I see that you've been podcasting. And I like the topic, financial freedom and the opening, you went through those four different freedoms. That's awesome. So there's a lot of overlap between what you and I do in terms of trying to educate and support physicians and others out there with their freedom in general.
Christopher H. Loo, MD-PhD: Yeah, yeah. So we'll get started. And we'll just like, tell us about your path and your journey. I think it's really interesting. And you've you've really focused on the niche of non-clinical careers, and you teach physicians and you've grown. What's interesting is you've grown a significant following. I think it's like 20,000, plus followers on Facebook and all across. So tell us more about your journey and how you got started.
Dr. John Jurica, MD, MPH, CPE: Alright, I'll try to keep it to the short version, since I've been around for a long time. But I was a family physician in a small group outside of Chicago, doing the typical thing. And I got a little bit interested in non-clinical things, partly because I wanted to moonlight, make some more money and pay off some minor loans that I had, but then ultimately, later, I got kind of burnt out. So I was doing different jobs, physician advisor, jobs, Medical Director for a couple of different units. And ultimately, I got so interested in it. And I found that I could earn as much as I was clinically with a whole lot less trauma to my psyche, and no call, and you know, all kinds of perks.
So I went into hospital management, I was the VP Ma. And then I became the chief medical officer for my hospital. And I did that for 14 years. And I thought it was awesome. I was helping people in a lot of ways that did not involve direct patient care with me. But I was helping through better quality and better safety in the hospital, I really had an impact and probably 1000s and 1000s of patients and I was making more money. So I did that and I got a little bit, I wouldn't say bored. But I thought well, I want to try one more new thing at least. And so as not to print, I opened my own urgent care center and partnered up with some people, we grew that to two centers, and I'm, I'm kind of in the process now of kind of pulling back on that. But that freed up a little time for me.
And that's when I got involved in writing a blog and starting my podcast. And really the reason I started the podcast was because I wanted to learn about other non-clinical careers. I mean, I knew a lot about hospital based careers in the non-clinical fields. But so I thought, well, I'll just get people on my podcast now, kind of quiz them and I'll learn as much as I can. And I wanted to help other physicians that went through the same thing I did. So that's what's happened. That's got about 230 episodes now weekly episodes, I think a little over four years. And along the way, I did some other things, started producing some courses, I've got an academy, I've done a mastermind group, which is fun, get a group of physicians together to talk about their careers and try and accelerate their career transition.
And then most recently, a friend of mine and colleague who's been on my podcast a couple times, we decided to venture into something new. And a couple, three years ago, we started something called the clinicians cooperative, which didn't really go anywhere. So we kind of regrouped, and really, about two months ago, released what's called NewScript. And it's an app. It's a community. It's a site where you can learn about non-clinical careers and it's designed for not only physicians But nurses, PDAs, NPs dentists, anybody that's a licensed caregiver that is experiencing issues with burnout or really to help them thrive and not just survive in whatever they're doing.
Christopher H. Loo, MD-PhD: Yeah, that's, that's a great intro. So, I have a lot of questions about that. So, the first question is right now, are you seeing an uptick in interest in physicians interested in non-clinical careers? And what are the reasons for that? Is it just because of alternative interests? Or is it because of burnout? Just tell us more about why physicians are looking more into non-clinical careers?
Dr. John Jurica, MD, MPH, CPE: Yeah, I think it's still on the upswing. I think it's still growing. It was, I think it also kind of catalyzed in a sense by the pandemic, because, well, the things that happened, the pandemic, in terms of some people being let go, some people their burnout was ratcheted up to a whole new level. But basically, as more and more of us physicians find ourselves in sort of a corporate style of medicine, where we're treated as employees instead of professionals, we just get disgruntled, unhappy, dissatisfied, sometimes burnt out, suicide rate is really high in physicians. And so to me, we're still on the upswing. And part of it too, is people like you and others. You've talked about other podcast guests, you've talked to you as they have gotten the word out. And we've, as we've all gotten the word out that there are alternatives to using your clinical knowledge in a way that doesn't lead to burnout to where we can have the financial freedom and have a little bit of choice and freedom in your life. Interest just keeps growing.
Christopher H. Loo, MD-PhD: Yeah. And what are some of the areas that you know, physicians can get started in or they have a lot of interest? Which areas in terms of non-clinical careers? Are you seeing a lot of inquiry?
Dr. John Jurica, MD, MPH, CPE: Oh, there's, there's some of the more popular ones, there are literally 1000s of different jobs in hundreds of different positions. But the big ones are hospitals, hospital and health systems employ a lot of physicians doing non-clinical work, everything from physician visors, medical directors, Chief Medical Officer, Chief Medical Information Officer, Chief Patient Safety Officer, it's growing and growing. So that's a huge one. It is the biggest part of the healthcare system in the United States. So you can imagine there's a lot of money being spent and a lot of physicians doing those things. Pharma is another massive one there. Dozens of different discrete jobs and 1000s of openings right now in pharma. And pharma makes up about 10 or 11%, I think of the national spending share on healthcare, but that's a huge one of awesome jobs.
You don't have to be a researcher to get into jobs and pharma has a lot of medical writing jobs out there all things from journalistic writing to CMU writing. So that's a very popular one. And then insurance companies course, a big one is utilization management. But you've got all kinds of jobs that benefit management, all insurance companies, basically. And there's also jobs and life insurance companies, if you can imagine that. Then you've got all the entrepreneurial ventures, you've got what I consider some of the clinical or non traditional ventures like the DPC, the cash only businesses, then they've got all the different consultants that can do it as either part of a large consulting firm or do your own consulting freelance. So that's just a snippet where I have a handout I give out that has 70 discrete jobs. And probably there's another 20 I haven't even put on that list yet. Yeah,
Christopher H. Loo, MD-PhD: Yeah, it's amazing, all of the different niches and because we're trained as physicians to just focus on one path to direct patient care, and you know, we'd sort of sidetrack all these different options. And it's great that physicians can realize that once they realize they have a lot of skills that they can leverage, they start to flourish. So now, let's transition into a NewScript, which is the you know, and I know it's an app. So tell us what, what was the reasoning behind using an app versus a a, like a Facebook group community group, just tell us more about why you decided to do an app for it?
Dr. John Jurica, MD, MPH, CPE: And it was a learning process. You know, it was something like a lot of small businesses, they start out with one thing and then they kind of shift gears, they get feedback and they ship so we, we did like a typical sort of online forum three years ago. Like I said, they call it the clinicians cooperative. And it just did not get a lot of traction. Part of it was I think everyone was more or less focusing on their smartphones rather than sitting down at a computer for one. The other was that yeah, and the other thing was that the Facebook groups were very popular. But you know, there's issues there with, they can be closed down at any time Facebook, Twitter, I mean, they all do these things, they shut things down because they don't like something. So there's that fear.
Now on Facebook, anytime you're successful, you're going to start seeing ads put on by Facebook, not your ads, but everybody else's ads. So now you've competing with ads. And it's also for some of their physicians that just refused to go into Facebook. So even though there are several large groups of physicians related, not clinical careers, I know some of my followers say I just don't want to even be on Facebook. So we wanted to do something private, something on a smartphone, something geared to younger physicians. And at the same time, no ads, and confidentiality and convenience. So we started to actually hire an outside firm that will create a template for an app. And then it gets customized and we spent about the last year doing a bunch of brand things.
So we decided we need to do it a little differently. So we engage this company to help us create it. And now we're inviting other licensed healthcare professionals who have the same concerns that physicians do. And we're recruiting faculty to help us engage. So we have experts on pharma experts on other things besides what we've done. Tom's an expert in telemedicine and consulting, and he's a book author. And I'm mostly different from what I've learned on my podcast. I have some expertise in a lot of things, but mostly health systems and hospitals. And yeah, so now we're in a growing phase. And we're trying to get people that are experts even if they aren't even physicians and well, what we can do is have different groups within NewScript. Again, it's all freestanding, and it's all private.
Christopher H. Loo, MD-PhD: And so what are some of the groups that people like when you sign up as a NewScript? What are some of the features that you no one can benefit from?
Dr. John Jurica, MD, MPH, CPE: So what we've done besides it being a community, we've also posted every single day there with useful resources. I do, like a comment, not a comment, but an actual daily written post. We do live stream events, weekly time is one or two a week. I do one, it's all related to non-clinical careers. I put in Thomas also put in some of the courses that we offer elsewhere. We just put them in there for free so people can just access them. Mine has to do with exposure to non-clinical careers and overview of non-clinical careers for physicians in particular and then people that are members can also post all of those as well and they can do their own live streams if they want. So it's a little bit more sophisticated in a simple form or simple Facebook group, although you can do some of those things on Facebook, obviously.
Christopher H. Loo, MD-PhD: Yeah, yeah. That's awesome. So for the members in the audience listening, Dr. Drake, his NewScript, all of the links and all the information will be in the show notes. And I know you have a free report that directs listeners to the top clinics, clinical jobs, non-clinical jobs as well as the different types of careers out there. So, and I know you're also a large library of online courses. So I know a lot of people would be interested in further education. So tell us more about the non-clinical career academy.
Dr. John Jurica, MD, MPH, CPE: Yes, so that's it, non-clinical career academy.com, nice and simple. I've been building that over about the last three years, I've got 25 courses on there, each of them address something related to mindset, overview of what's out there in terms of non-clinical jobs, primarily for physicians, some of them get into more details, I've got several courses on how to pursue a career in non-clinical work at a hospital. I also have a pretty extensive course on how to become a medical science liaison, simply because I've interviewed so many MSLs and I did a lot of research on that.
And then if you'd rather have the opportunity there, instead of just paying a bunch of money for the courses, you can join as a member and just pay a smaller monthly membership fee. And then you access everything you like in there for as long as you like at your own pace. And then once you've finished what you need, you can drop back off. So I've tried to make it as user friendly as possible, as reasonably as I can. But there's a lot of information here if you're just getting started and you really want to know what's out there. It even has a one hour kind of masterclass on telemedicine and another one on how to start your own business with Mike Woo-Ming? Somebody I think you know, pretty well.
Christopher H. Loo, MD-PhD: Yeah. A lot of the viewers and audience would get a lot of value. So, John, thanks so much for being on this. I really enjoyed this conversation. I know we had some connectivity issues, but all your wealth of resources, your knowledge will be in the show notes, and just tell people how to get in touch with you, how to follow you, as well as any parting words of wisdom.
Dr. John Jurica, MD, MPH, CPE: Okay, let's see, if you want to track me down at non-clinical physicians.com is a website and you'll have you can go to the podcast episodes, you can get a freebie there, do whatever I look around the course the podcast is on any podcast app, just look for Physician NonClinical Careers with John Jurica. And I guess closing I would say this, unfortunately, we found ourselves most of us are in clinical medicine in rather tough situations. Sometimes there's there's like I said, the suicide rates high that the burnout is high.
And I just want everyone to understand it know that if you've completed medical school, and particularly if you've completed a residency, you have a lot of information, you have a lot of knowledge and skills that are important in the healthcare system itself, that don't necessarily require you to kill yourself seeing patients and being on call every other night and so forth. So it's a lot of opportunities out there. Don't get discouraged. And people like Dr. Loo and myself can help you out if you feel like you'd like to make a change.
Christopher H. Loo, MD-PhD: Oh, awesome. Thanks so much. It was a great conversation, and we'll look forward to having you on future episodes.
Dr. John Jurica, MD, MPH, CPE: It's been my pleasure. Great to be here. Bye bye.
Christopher H. Loo, MD-PhD: Many thanks again for being here. If you’re new, you can find me online at Christopher H. Loo, MD-PhD, where I have links to other episodes or links to online resources that will support you on your financial literacy journey. I’ll see you there in on next week’s show. While I bring you thoroughly vetted information on this show regarding a variety of financial topics, I cannot promise you a one size fits all solution. This is why I caution you to continue to learn. Educate yourself and seek professional advice unique to your situation. If you want to talk to me, I welcome it. Please reach out via my website or email at Chris@drchrisloomdphd.com. I read and personally respond to all of my emails. Talk soon!
Editor's note: This transcript has been edited for brevity and clarity.