By Cheryl G. Murphy, OD
April 6, 2016
As our work-life balance needs change, so does the size of our workshifts. Optometry is one of the rare professions where, if you look hard enough, you can find a shift that is flexible enough to fit the demands of your everyday life and that of your family’s.
I’ve searched and found that balance, I think, and it comes with both compromises and points of satisfaction.
When I was a new grad, I worked my tail off. I had a new mortgage, was newly married and had a ton of student loans. I accepted a job with a practice that had two locations, which allowed them to offer me many hours. I worked between 40-47 hours a week with 10-hour shifts on four weekdays a week and a seven-hour shift every other Saturday. The paychecks were large,and I had a ton of energy and enthusiasm for the profession. Further, I wantedto bank as much money as possible to help pay off loans. At the time, working full time worked for me.
Back then, I wanted to be a practice owner, but didn’t have a plan to realize that goal.I was keeping my fingers crossed that my employers would come up to me one day and simply ask me to buy in and become a partner with them. It didn’t happen, but that was OK because my life changed in such a way that I may not have been able to keep up with the responsibilities that go with becoming a practice owner.
I was blessed with triplets in 2007 and my priorities shifted from paying off the mortgage early to caring for my three preemies so that they survived and thrived. I also wanted to do everything I could to avoid paying for the cost of daycare times three. We decided that for our family the best option we would be for me to stay home to raise the kids (while still working part time as an OD) and for my husband to continue to work his full time job at an energy company.
For the first five years, it worked out great. I found hours on weekends when my husband was off and could watch the kids. I even found hours on weeknights when he got home from work. At one point, I was working for a small optical just seven hours a week on Tuesday nights from 5-8 p.m. and Saturdays 9 a.m.-1 p.m. As my three kids got older and started kindergarten all at the same time, I found shifts that allowed me to work a nine-hour shift on a weekday, and my in-laws agreed to watch the kids after school on that day. I also continued to work every Saturday.
Currently, I still work that one nine-hour weekday shift at the same place as before, but recently I am happy to say I stopped working weekend shifts altogether! I started working for an ophthalmologist on two other weekdays for short, four-hour shifts while my kids are in school (the shift I work is 10 a.m.- 2 p.m.) These short shifts equal the same amount of hours (and pay) a week as a Saturday shift would. I found that as my kids got older, I was missing out on a lot, and even though I work part time, I wanted my Saturdays back. I was missing soccer and baseball games, flag football tournaments and family parties. I also wanted to be able to go to visit my aging parents on some weekends, and they lived very far away. I needed to find a place to work that didn’t first and foremost ask me to work on Saturdays (that is the day a lot of optometry practices try to pass off to the new doctor first).
I am happy to say that I found one. The practice I currently work for doesn’t have Saturday hoursand hasn’t in 30 years. They tried that once and it wasn’t worth missing out on their weekends for no-shows and the like.
It is possible to find a practice that is willing to work around your schedule, like the one I did that gave me two shorter shifts during school hours, rather than a weekend day (and it was actually their idea!). The previous optometrist there had worked similar shifts, so the groundwork had already been laid for me there. If you interview at a practice, ask them if they would consider giving you short, weekday shifts. Maybe they would be willing to try it out on a day they didn’t have doctors hours before.
Through the years, I have run across a lot of optometrists who laugh when you say you don’t want to work weekends.I was told by an OD once, “If you didn’t want to work Saturdays, then why did you even go into this profession?” However, I am here to tell you that it is not an impossibility in optometry. Sure, it might be harder to find, but if you have time to look, and are willing to compromise, you can find a position that is outside of the stereotypical OD shift.
We are very lucky that as optometrists, we are not just regular “9-to-5” workers. Sometimes we can actually build our work around our lives, instead of our lives around our work. Yes, it is possible, and yes, in this profession.
How do you achieve work-life balance? Have you ever worked an unconventional shift as an optometrist, such as a half day? Should employed optometrists be able to reject working weekends, or is Saturday “the big day” for optometry? Besides shorter shifts, what other ways have you been able to build your optometric career around your family’s needs?
Cheryl G. Murphy, OD, practices in Holbrook, N.Y. You can like her on Facebook or follow her on Twitter @murphyod. To contact her: murphyc2020@gmail.com.
