004: How to Know If You Can Replace Your Hospital Income

Discover how medical professionals across specialties are successfully translating their expertise into remote income streams, challenging traditional employment models. In this episode, Dr. Kristine explains why it's possible, how to identify your transferable skills, and steps to create a flexible, location-independent career. 

Key topics:

• The common doubts physicians have about replacing their hospital income
• How medical training reinforces the belief that expertise is only valuable inside institutions
• Transferable skills all doctors possess that can be leveraged outside traditional settings
• Real-life examples of physicians building remote income models
• The importance of mindset shifts to see new income opportunities
• How burnout impacts cognitive flexibility and creativity
• Practical steps to structure existing expertise into remote income streams

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:01

You're listening to Doctors Abroad, the podcast for doctors who want to build remote income and create location independence. I'm Dr. Christine Golens, founder of Nomadem D. I've exceeded my hospital income while working part-time and living abroad, and on this show, we break down how to make hospital income optional. Let's get started. Welcome back. Today we are talking about how to know if you can replace your hospital income. One of the biggest doubts physicians have when they start exploring remote income sounds like this. Maybe this works for other doctors, but I don't think it works for my specialty. Or sometimes it sounds like, I don't think I'm the kind of doctor who could replace my hospital income. And what's interesting is that almost every physician who says this believes their situation or specialty is uniquely difficult. Surgeons think they're too hands-on. Primary care doctors think their expertise isn't specialized enough. Hospitalists think their work only exists inside a hospital. Psychiatrists think telemedicine is already saturated. Radiologists think everything is controlled by large institutions. Everyone believes their situation is the exception. And yet every year I watch physicians across every specialty build remote income streams. So the question isn't can doctors replace hospital income online? The real question is, how do you know if you can? That is what we are breaking down in this episode. So one of the biggest reasons doctors really doubt themselves is because of how we're trained. Medical education conditions us to believe that our expertise only has value inside very specific, very defined roles inside hospitals, inside clinics, inside institutional systems. And if you step outside those structures, suddenly your value becomes uncertain. But there's a reason that narrative persists, because institutions benefit when doctors believe their expertise only belongs inside their system. If doctors believe their skills only work inside hospitals, they remain dependent on those hospitals. But the truth is physicians possess some of the most transferable skills in the professional world. Skills like complex decision making under pressure, analytical reasoning, communication with high-stakes consequences, leadership with multidisciplinary teams, risk management, systems thinking. These are not just clinical skills. These are high-level professional competencies and they are valuable far beyond traditional clinical employment. So I first noticed this about my own expertise while I was actually practicing clinical medicine because the institution that I worked for had me doing so many different roles at once. Now I'm looking back on it and it was actually a good thing. But I was utilizing my skills with educators, with administrators. I was working with government employees. I was working with executives, other physicians, corporate systems. I was working with everyone across multiple industries every single day as an employee at my job. And so over time, I began to realize the only difference here is that the institution is acting as a middleman. Because otherwise, I'm doing the same work. And as a middleman, the institution was deciding different things for me, things that I didn't actually have to figure out for myself. They decided who I could serve, when I could serve them, how I would be serving them, and how much my expertise was worth. But the expertise itself was always mine. And once I really understood that, a different possibility opened up for me. I started to think, I don't actually need the institution to be my middleman. I would like to make these decisions for myself. And I think this is the place where most physicians make that critical mistake. Because when they start exploring remote work, one of the first questions they ask themselves is what job can I get remotely? But that question assumes that the only way to earn, the only way to utilize your expertise and really make a difference is through the employment model. And inside Nomad MD, we approach this differently. Instead of asking what job you should get, we ask what expertise do you already have that can be translated into income? Because the fastest path to remote income is not becoming someone brand new, it's translating what you already know, the clinical expertise that you utilize every single day on your job, your lived experience, your professional judgment, and moving that into income models that exist outside of traditional employment. And this is where physicians tend to have the biggest mindset shifts. Because when you start looking at what doctors are already every day doing, you see how adaptable medical expertise really is. Right? Anesthesiologists providing remote preoperative consultations, dermatologists teaching injection techniques to other providers online, radiologists consulting with medical devices and AI imaging platforms, psychiatrists offering peer-to-peer and educational consultations, physicians advising healthcare startups. Some doctors remain clinical, some build hybrid models, some move into non-clinical areas or move into consulting or education. The point is not that every physician should follow the same exact path, right? We're not in medical school anymore. The point is that medical expertise can be translated in many different ways. So one physician that I worked with came into our work together with an extensive amount of expertise, had training in multiple areas and specialties, including psychiatry. She had advanced certifications. You know, we love our certifications. If there's something we're going to do, we're going to get certifications, right? And she also had experience in coaching, things that were really unique and important to her. And on paper, she looked incredibly, incredibly qualified. But internally, she was completely stuck because she didn't know how to structure any of that knowledge, expertise, degrees into a business. So she was asking questions like, which one of these should I actually focus on? Is it legitimate to use both my clinical and my non-clinical skill sets in my work? You know, can I actually be relevant in doing what I do without an institution behind me? And can this work actually support me financially? Especially because she wanted to live across multiple countries. And so she needed a model that could work remotely. And so what we did was translate her expertise into a dual track structure. She wanted to do medical work within her licensed region, and she also built non-clinical coaching services that were global. So once that structure became clear and she was able to create those different arms to house the different types of work that she really loved to do, the confusion really disappeared. She went from having multiple interests and no clear direction to having a distinct pathway toward remote income that aligned with both her expertise and her lifestyle goals. And again, she didn't become someone brand new. She didn't switch careers. She simply structured the expertise, the experience, the talents that she already had. And there's another reason why physicians struggle to see these opportunities. Burnout literally reduces cognitive flexibility. So when you are seeing patients back to back to back, charting late into the evening, constantly under time and administrative pressure, your brain shifts into survival mode. And when the brain is in survival mode, creativity shuts down. Strategic thinking shuts down. Not because those other opportunities or possibilities don't exist, but because you don't have the cognitive bandwidth to actually see them. This is one reason so many physicians feel trapped. It's not that they lack options, it's that exhaustion makes those options invisible. And I know that because I've seen it happen to colleagues, but I've also seen it in myself. For at least two years of me practicing, I was so exhausted, I couldn't even think of a way out of that. All I was thinking about was how how do I get from Monday to Saturday? That's all I could think about. Right? So you really do need a moment, a breath. Things only began to change once I was intentional about creating a space to even think about what else could be possible. So I want you to take a moment right now, just 60 seconds, and ask yourself this question. What skills do I use every day that have nothing to do with writing prescriptions? Maybe it's leadership, decision making, maybe it's communication, procedural mastery, strategy, systems thinking? Those are the exact skills many remote income models are built on. So when physicians ask, can I replace my hospital income? They're usually asking the wrong question. The real question is, have my skills been translated into income structures that give me leverage? Because once that translation happens, one thing becomes very clear. Anyone who is a physician is far more capable of replacing hospital income than they ever imagined. So if you want help translating your expertise and experience into a remote income model that can realistically replace hospital income, you can book a one-to-one freedom consultation at theNomadMD.com. Thanks for listening to Doctors Abroad. If this episode was helpful, share it with a colleague who's been thinking about building more freedom and flexibility in medicine. And if you're ready to make hospital income optional, book a one to one freedom consultation at theNomadMD.com. I'll see you in the next episode.