 Welcome back to the channel, everybody. For those of you who are new around here, my name is Michael, aka Dr. Cellini, and I'm a board certified diagnostic and interventional radiologist in New Jersey. On today's video, we're going to be talking about what I've experienced in the first six months out of training as a completely finished attending physician in New Jersey. And it's been quite a whirlwind, and I wanted to talk to you all about it because A, it may give you a little motivation going forward if you're like in a rut and menstrual residency and all that stuff. And you're like, how I will never be at the end. Maybe this video will help you out because it's so, so much brighter on the other side. I promise. And I wanted to touch on a few things that I liked about being an attending physician in the first six months so far. So let's get into it. So I'll just be right into it here. So one of the biggest things I've noticed being in practice for a whopping six months now is that as an attending physician, you have complete autonomy. And I know what you're thinking and you're like, well, obviously you're an attending physician. I would hope you would have autonomy. However, this is like super delayed autonomy because we go through our entire med school of four years training six years for me. And you never completely have full autonomy or the final say in anything. But now you do. I have the ability to decide and make the final decisions as the physician. I can put my foot down and see if something is medically necessary or say no to something that isn't medically necessary. And I have that autonomy to do so because I'm a board certified physician. It's hard for me to really put into words, but this is just something I've been waiting for so long. However, it comes with great responsibility because as you can imagine, having that kind of autonomy is very stressful. And that's something I wasn't prepared for. Well, I was sort of prepared for it, but you never really know what it's gonna be like until you're in the driver's seat and you're experiencing it firsthand. People always told me, it's gonna be stressful being the autonomous one and having the final say in everything, but it's a blessing and a curse. It's great because you can do everything you've learned to do and be an autonomous practicing physician because you're trained to do so, but it's also terrifying at the same time. But you like slowly get used to it over time. I can't really describe it any other way. So besides autonomy, the next thing I love so far as I'm attending is the respect you get from your colleagues. Now I'm not saying like, oh, there's some big bad doctor walking around and we should respect him. No, I'm talking about like finally having the last say and having your clinical judgment actually means something because in training, you always kind of have someone looking over your shoulder and they can either change or disagree with what you're saying or make you look stupid in front of other practicing physicians because you're just a trainee and even though sometimes you know what you're doing, you still look stupid in front of other physicians, but now you actually have the respect to your colleagues. Now, you don't immediately get it and I most definitely don't have it from every physician in my hospital. You do have to earn it somewhat, but the thing is once you do earn it, you have the respect of everybody else, your peers and everybody you work with, and it's awesome because you don't get that in training. No one really trusts your clinical acumen because you're not a board certified specialist in your field, but once you are, people do respect that and they value your opinion. They come to you with questions about their patients, how to manage them, how to treat them, what kind of procedures can you offer them and they trust you and they have respect for your crafts and your field and your clinical judgment and your medical knowledge and your clinical acumen and your procedural skills. And it's something we're used to people just not having respect for us in training, but once you're finally there, it's not really something I seek out, but it's nice to know that your colleagues kind of trust you and have respect for you. The next thing I love so far, this may be one of my top things I love so far and that is you get to kind of customize your practice into whatever you wanna do. And what I mean by that is, if you don't wanna do a certain type of procedure or you wanna do a certain type of procedure, guess what, you can. You can just be like, oh, I don't do those or I don't wanna do those or I don't wanna develop that practice, but I do wanna do this. Like, I don't wanna do, you know, I like ports, but say someone didn't like to do chemo ports, I could be like, oh, I don't do ports or whatever, I send those to someone else, but on the same token, I could be like, oh, I really wanna do fibroid embolization and I could do that. Your ability to kind of customize your practice into whatever you want. And again, I keep comparing it back to training where you just have to deal with whatever comes through the door and you have to do it with whatever the physician you're working with wants to do. You're just kind of there doing whatever they wanna do. You're never working or thinking for yourself and doing whatever you wanna do, you're just doing whatever someone else wants to do. So now that you're finally in practice, you can do what you wanna do and it's so nice, you can kind of make your own schedule, do whatever procedure or whatever things you like as long as the hospital and your practice are okay with it and it's nice for once. One of my favorite things I've noticed so far as I'm attending for six months now is that you get to develop close, awesome relationships with your staff. And honestly, I built relationships with my staff, especially in residency because I was there for four years and I also built relationship with my staff during fellowship, but it was only one year and you're rotating in and out of multiple rooms and it's hard to really get to know people in that short period of time. However, now this is our practice. We all work together as a team and we get to know each other like a team and I've had a great time so far getting to know all of my texts, getting to know all my nurses, getting to know all the ancillary staff and even getting to know other physicians around the hospital. It's just been fun. I don't know. I like meeting people and I like to get to know people and when you're working with people for so long and so close together for so many hours every single day, it's nice to become friends with everybody. I've always enjoyed working in kind of like a family environment and that's ultimately what I was seeking in residency and founded at UNC, which is why I'm next there and that's what I was looking for in a job as well because you want somewhere where everybody's on the same page, everybody has each other's back and you're a team. All right, so what kind of financial medical person would I be if I didn't mention one of the best things about finally being done with training and that is finally having a decent salary. It's been very tough living on no salary for four years and then a smaller salary with a lot of training behind your name and a degree behind your name and you're not getting paid your worth for many, many years but now you finally can and it's not just having money. It's just, it's a little easier now, right? You always have a student loan debt but you now have a little more wiggle room and a little more freedom and ultimately what that does is allow for a little less stress in your life because we all know we worked in a very stressful career and everything that we've gone through up to this point has been very stressful but now at least we can offer it a little bit of less stress with a little higher paycheck and it makes going to work hurt a little less. It's always a little better going to work knowing that you're compensated what you're actually worth rather than being not compensated what you're worth in residency. And yes, I don't care what anybody says. Obviously we have the student loans but it's pretty nice having a better salary and being paid what you're worth. I wanna reiterate that. It's not having a high salary, it's just the fact that you're paid what you're worth because we go through all this training and ultimately we're just like, is this even worth it? But eventually it is and it's nice. For those of you who are wondering if it's going to be nicer on the other side, it is. All right, so besides that, what is my absolute favorite part of being a completely done board certified physician so far? And that is, drumo please, the vacation. Obviously I like to pay but the vacation is everything for me because you know I like to travel. So the reason it's so nice and I love it so much is because I spent so many years not being able to go to so many different functions. I missed out on all of my friends' events, multiple weddings, multiple birthday parties, christenings, showers, baby showers, all this stuff, graduation. I missed out on so many things during my late 20s and early 30s. I'm trying to like make up for lost time. So now that I have the ability to, A, take time off and B, go on vacations. I go somewhere all the time in multiple times a year. I did a lot of vacation, probably more than most physicians but I spend that time now kind of compensating for all the stuff I missed out on. I'm going to every baby shower or whatever I possibly can right now and hanging out with friends as much as possible because I wasn't able to do that. And I'm traveling as you know, I usually have a vacation, give or take once every month or so and I'm trying to travel as much as possible to make up for lost time. Now I did travel as much as I could in residency but when you only have four weeks of vacation and you're working like a dog for every single year to get those four weeks of vacation, you can't really, A, afford to go on vacation or B, want to go on vacation because you're so tired all the time but now I'm not as tired and I have the funds to go on vacation and I have the time to go on vacation so I'm going on vacation. And that's what we've been doing, obviously you've seen my Italy travel blog, you've seen my Paris travel blog and that's just in the last few months and we were going to go somewhere this month but we ultimately decided not to because Pandy Wendy is picking up in certain parts of the world and the last thing I wanted to do was get stuck somewhere and get the illness somewhere and not be able to come back to the United States because that's the most stressful part of traveling right now. But nonetheless, the vacation is like, I have been waiting for this moment for so long and it's finally come true and I can't really explain it. I mean, everything I'm talking about, I can't really explain, it's just so much better to just be able to do what you want and like go on vacation whenever you want and actually plan out your schedule and not have a million other things to do. So that pretty much sums up this entire video about my first six months as an attending physician, diagnostic and interventional radiologist and in private practice and hope you all enjoyed it. Let me know in the comments below if you have any questions, make sure you join my channel, become a member, you get some pretty cool perks and otherwise smash that subscribe button as usual, follow me on Instagram and TikTok and I'll see you all on the next video. Bye.