A new interactive tool provides physicians interested in volunteering or working outside of their normal practice settings with short-term opportunities in the field of medicine. The Physician Opportunities Portal, launched today by the AMA, enables physicians to quickly and easily identify opportunities to add stability and longevity to their careers and increase joy in practice by giving back.
The Portal features many opportunities, including:
- Consulting
- Legal expert
- Locum tenens
- Emergency and safety
- Health and wellness
- AMA opportunities
Users may search by location, start date and even time of day. The Portal also features opportunities in areas that are not health care focused, such as advocacy, education and recreation.
Created from physician feedback
The Physician Opportunities Portal grew out of an initiative in which the AMA reached out to physicians across the country to start a dialogue about the realities of practicing medicine in today’s world and how the AMA can better serve them. Feedback indicated physicians in small practices are highly stressed by administrative burdens and government regulations. Many have very little time and multiple pressing priorities, so they are seeking quick, short-term opportunities to create additional revenue streams to help stabilize their practices.
The AMA also received feedback from retired physicians indicating they are interested in staying connected to medicine and may continue to work in the field of medicine.
Additional tools supporting physicians
The Portal is the latest product developed by the AMA to help physicians plan their careers and manage their finances.
The AMA also recently launched the Health Workforce Mapper to help practices identify high-priority areas for workforce expansion. It illustrates the geographic distribution of the health care workforce and enables users to filter physician and non-physician health care professionals by specialty and employment setting at the state, county and metropolitan levels.
The latest version of the mapper incorporates every specialty and subspecialty in the AMA Physician Masterfile and the CMS National Provider Identifier database, including non-physician specialties. It also includes resident physicians.
Meanwhile, the JAMA Career Center aggregates career opportunities, news and information relevant to the full spectrum of medical practice. Job postings are available from nearly every specialty, practice setting and region in the United States. Opportunities can range from remote rural and underserved urban areas to thriving neighborhoods in towns and major metropolitan centers.
The JAMA Career Center also presents select international physician employment and volunteer opportunities and offers a list of organizations looking for volunteers, which includes the areas each organization serves and the specialties needed.
Physician feedback an important factor
The Physician Opportunities Portal is a free tool, and all users may view available volunteer opportunities. With a free online AMA account, users can also save searches and receive timely alerts. AMA members may save searches, receive alerts and access paid opportunities.
Your feedback can help ensure the tool is providing the resources you need. If you have opinions of the Physician Opportunities Portal, the AMA would like to hear from you.
