Physician and provider wellness

WHILE RELOCATING FOR A physician position may be a quotidian practice, it doesn’t mean the decision to uproot the familiarity and comforts of your own day-to-day life and move is an easy one.

In fact, the complete opposite is true. The situation can become even more complicated when you add into the mix a partner who has their own career plans and locale preferences and children with their own activities. Before you know it, one decision can turn into hundreds.

From narrowing down your family’s destination preferences and non-negotiables to your partner’s career considerations, navigating the moving process (and costs) can be stressful and involved.

With all there is to consider, how can you determine the best overall fit for your whole family?

Involve them in the process

Where you practice has an impact on how your family’s next five, 10 or 20 years may look, so make sure to hear and consider every voice.

Family medicine physician Justin Jeffries, D.O., is originally from Hinton, West Virginia (where PracticeLink got its start!), population around 2,000.

Jeffries is now an emergency room physician with UPMC Horizon in Farrell, Pennsylvania, and UPMC Jameson in New Castle — both in the Pittsburgh metropolitan area, which claims a population of just over 300,000.

Jeffries had already experienced living in drastically differing locations before he and his wife, Laura, were able to decide the best fit for their family, which included two young children, the oldest still in kindergarten at the time.

“I did my residency in Michigan, right outside of Detroit. So I went from a very rural setting where I grew up to a very urban setting and then tried to go back to the rural life,” Jeffries says.

After experiencing the extremes of these two different locations, one very rural and one more metropolitan, Jeffries and his wife felt confident planting roots in Pennsylvania.

“My wife says we’re not allowed to move again,” he says with a laugh. “We like it here; we have a beautiful house, it’s a beautiful area, there’s anything we could possibly want to do. All the amenities of the big city are there, and you can drive 20 minutes away and there’s a nice big lake with hiking trails. We really found a good area.”

Choosing a community — not just a job

No matter the profession, when people are asked to draw up a list of their non-negotiable factors when choosing a place to live, proximity to family is often near the top of the list.

For physicians, a strong and nearby support system is especially priceless. 

Michigan native Bridget Nazar, D.O., completed her pre-med studies at Michigan State University before attaining her medical school degree in Phoenix. Now in her last year of residency at HCA Florida Woodmont Hospital in Tamarac, Florida, she has already accepted a position at Pine Rest Christian Mental Health Services, which will reunite her with her hometown.

When it came time to envision the next step after residency, Nazar and her spouse came up with a game plan as a team.

“When my husband and I started talking about transitioning after residency, we narrowed things down from looking at every state as a possibility to maybe thinking we would be able to return to our home state,” Nazar says. “We ultimately decided we should focus on states where we already have family, then narrow the list from there.”

When it came time to whittle down the list even further, everything aligned perfectly with their decision to accept her first position after residency back in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

“I always had a soft spot for Grand Rapids. It’s a nice mix between having access to a lot of different amenities but still not having to deal with some of the big city issues like traffic or a high cost of living,” Nazar says. “…It just felt really comfortable and like the right decision to move back to be closer to our family and closer to a support system.”

Nazar explained how her partner and his own career timeline matches hers perfectly, which was another factor that only affirmed their decision. “He’s actually finishing up law school down here in Florida; the timing worked out where he will basically graduate pretty close to the same time that I do,” she says.

Career considerations

Similarly, Jeffries and his wife were able to take advantage of their move for dual career fresh starts, as Laura used the opportunity to partake in her own professional transition.

“She decided that she wanted to change careers to occupational therapy and found an occupational therapy program close to where we were moving,” Jeffries says. “It definitely helped us determine what area we wanted to live in. I wanted to be relatively close to my work, she wanted to be relatively close to the school where she got accepted.”

When it came time for Eric Barbarite, M.D., and his wife, Lauren, to relocate for his position at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, having careers in the same industry made both of their transitions a smoother process than the norm.

“I think the transition was easier logistically because we are both in health care,” Barbarite says. “My wife did have to transfer her professional life as a nurse to St. Louis. However, instead of switching jobs in our new city, she just had to switch hospitals. Ultimately, it worked out great.”

Barbarite, assistant professor of otolaryngology, head and neck surgery at Washington University, fostered his medical aspirations in the suburbs of Fort Lauderdale,Florida, watching his father practice internal medicine and his mother work as a nurse practitioner. Despite starting his journey in South Florida, Barbarite has been no stranger to relocation as his career progresses.

Embrace the adventure

With stops at the University of Miami for medical school and residency at Harvard followed by a fellowship in facial plastic and reconstructive surgery at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, his medical journey making its latest stop in St. Louis was driven by the tremendous opportunity of the position and the intrigue of a new city.

“Part of my philosophy was that I wanted to find the opportunity that gave me the best foot forward to start my career in an environment that would be supportive and have the ability for me to grow,” Barbarite says. “Going through the process and looking at the available jobs, this position at Washington University was a fantastic opportunity for me. It’s an excellent institution with great people. I just felt very welcomed and ultimately the rest was history.”

While the job opportunity was one he could not pass up, the community also played a role. “…We wanted to be in a city that still had culture and entertainment. We didn’t want to be in a super rural area and, as a result, I didn’t pursue many such opportunities,” he says.

While researching his potential new landing place, Barbarite and his wife considered several aspects of the St. Louis metropolitan area, including its notable collection of low- or no-cost attractions such as its renowned zoo, the Missouri History Museum in Forest Park and the Saint Louis Art Museum.

“Something that really sold us when we were looking to move here was not only the school districts, but also the parks and all the cultural activities that seem to be going on every single weekend,” he says. “We’ve enjoyed that so far, just the two of us, but I can definitely see that once you have more members of your family that are into that sort of thing, it can be very easy to have an endless and also very inexpensive source of entertainment for a family.”

Navigating the logistics

No matter where the end point may be during a substantial move, stress is a common denominator.

Once the offer has officially been accepted and new living accommodations have been established, it’s only natural that some excitement may wear off temporarily as the often-complicated moving process moves to the forefront.

Barbarite and his wife benefitted from the ease that comes with using a moving company, aided with relocation funds from his new institution. “For my specific contract, there was a relocation bonus. They covered the moving costs to kind of bring our life from the coast to the Midwest,” he says. “We had a lot of help to get things all packed up and shipped across the country without too much physical energy required on our end. They definitely made the process very, very smooth.”

Though the common practice of hiring a moving company to pack most of your belongings and deliver them to a new address can cut out a lot of hassle, it can also lead to complications.

Jeffries explains: “I would say the only downside of doing that is there’s usually a delay in getting your stuff back. They may pack up your stuff and they’ll say we’ll see you in four or five days. So you have to find something to do with those four or five days until your stuff arrives and is unpacked; that’s something to look out for.”

Starting life somewhere new

Once the moving is completed and the “settling in” stage begins, the entire family can start the exciting process of exploring the new town and embracing a fresh start.

“My wife and I joke we could have easily just sat in our apartment all day and watched TV and we would never know what St. Louis is like,” Barbarite says. “But instead, we’re out there walking around, finding parks, going to farmers’ markets and finding the places to go grab coffee or get lunch or dinner. If you’re proactive and really just kind of get out there and explore, I think you’ll find a lot of things that you may never have expected to be really fantastic.” •