Should You Start a Ketamine Clinic or Continue Working In the Hospital?

If you’re a doctor working in the hospital, maybe you’ve had thoughts of starting a private practice but never took action. Maybe you’re also considering starting a ketamine clinic as an option. But is starting a ketamine clinic really worth leaving the security of a job in the hospital? In this blog post, we’ll talk about some things that you should consider to help you make that decision for yourself.

Every new endeavor must start with a “why.” The same goes for your ketamine clinic.

What’s Your Why?

You first need to ask yourself why you want to start a ketamine clinic. Is it because you’re tired and burned out from your current hospital job? If you are so burned out that you can’t stand patients or have become a frustrated, “salty” person, then we recommend taking a vacation or negotiating working less hours first before jumping into starting a clinic. Then when you are rested, revisit the idea of starting a ketamine clinic.

Over time, the administrative burdens of working in a traditional hospital system can weigh down on you like charting, going to mandatory meetings that are a waste of time, etc. But if you still love your practice and you love being the doctor you are, leaving it to start a ketamine clinic isn’t the best option. Sometimes you just need time away or the opportunity to have more time away by working less.

Based on our experience, burn out in itself is not enough of a strong reason to leave your current job and start a ketamine clinic. Although you may be annoyed by all the bureaucracy and administrative headaches at your current job, there is a lot of stuff that is taken care of for you that you don’t have to deal with. Yes, those online modules you have to complete each year is a headache, but the administrators are doing a lot of work that you’d have to do yourself if you started a private practice! Your “why” has to be big enough to overcome the many challenges you will face.

Are you starting a ketamine clinic because you’re not making enough money and need the clinic as another instant source of income. Or because you’re bored and want more challenges in your life. If your “why” is any of those reasons, then you won’t have a good enough foundation to start a ketamine clinic.

Learn about the other reasons why you SHOULDN’T start a ketamine clinic at our blog post HERE.

Now, if your “why” is because you truly want to help people and believe in the transformative powers of ketamine, then you’re on the right track! If you also want to be your own boss and take control of your career and finances, then we believe that’s another great reason as well. Every beginning starts with a “why,” which is what will keep you on the right track when things get tough. And trust us, running a ketamine clinic is a very challenging journey! So you need to be doing this for all the right reasons.

For more reasons why you SHOULD start a ketamine clinic, read our blog post HERE.

Entrepreneurship is a risky battle and not one that everyone can boldly take. How much of a risk-taker are you?

What risks are you willing to take?

There’s no doubt that starting a business is risky. Starting a ketamine clinic is no exception. In fact according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, approximately 20 percent of businesses fail within the first year, by the end of the second year, 30 percent will have failed. And after five years, about half will have failed! 

We’re not here to discourage you but starting a ketamine clinic is no doubt risky. And not only that, it takes money to make money. So to start a ketamine clinic, you need the funds. Those funds can come out of your own pockets or you can bring a few investors in, but at the end of the day, if that’s not something you’re comfortable with, then starting a ketamine clinic may not be such a good idea for you. 

Another risk is leaving your secure job in the hospital. And yes, although the pandemic indeed shook the belief that you’re 100% secure working in a hospital or a large healthcare system, it’s still definitely more secure than starting your own clinic.

One more thing to think about is where you are at in your career. A way to think about this is like investing. When you are young you can take more risks compared to when you are older. Starting a private practice, even a ketamine clinic, is a lot of work and we don’t recommend it as a retirement plan (unless you are partnering with someone to do the ketamine infusions and run the practice).

Leaving our jobs in the hospital was a huge risk for us, but we were willing to take the risk. We truly believe that this is our calling and so no amount of risk could stop us from building the ketamine clinic of our dreams!

The reality is that starting a ketamine clinic requires much more work than working in a hospital. Are you willing to work extra hard?

How much hard work are you willing to put in? 

If you think you’ll not be working as hard as you currently are when you start your ketamine infusion clinic, you are sadly wrong. At first, and for a good while, your ketamine clinic will be an entirely new job for you. Eventually, you’ll be just the owner of the ketamine clinic, if that’s your goal. But if you think you’ll just get to be an owner immediately, you’re wrong again. You will be owning AND operating, with the larger emphasis on the latter. In fact, even when you go home after a long day at your ketamine clinic, you most likely bring more work with you. 

We also mentioned earlier that we physicians can get burned out from all the administrative burdens from working in a hospital. Well, we hate to break it to you but there’s going to be A LOT of paperwork when you start your own clinic. Filing articles of incorporation, signing leases, etc. the list feels like it’s never ending! There’s no one else to do the paperwork except you alone, especially at the early stages.

So if you think that starting a ketamine clinic is your one way ticket to less stress and more free time, then you thought wrong. If you’re not willing to work hard, then go ahead and do something else. 

We all have a tendency to think that life is better somewhere else, doing something else. 

Is the grass really greener on the other side?

Here’s the reality, we definitely enjoyed the journey of creating our clinic, and we love the clinic we have now. We are grateful for our staff and all the patients we have been able to serve. But there are times that we fantasize over having an easier job or briefly entertain the idea of going back to the hospitals we used to work at. Life was simpler back then when an entire business didn’t have to rely on us.

This isn’t just the case for us. In fact, we all have a tendency to think that the grass is really greener on the other side, even when we’re already so happy with our ketamine clinic. Sadly, for some physicians, when they finally take the leap and leave their hospital jobs, they realize that what’s on the other side is’t greener grass, but hard, rough asphalt. It was nothing like they thought it would be and they eventually sell or close their clinics. This is why we’re giving you the cold hard truths as early as now so that you don’t get taken aback when you actually start a ketamine clinic yourself. 

For us, the grass is really green on this side. But that green we had fantasized about while Sam was working a night-shift over the holidays or Kim was sewing up a ruptured globe at 1 in the morning is not the green we’re now experiencing in reality. We are grateful for what we have and quickly realized on this journey of ours that the trap is thinking that our lives will be a thousand times better on the other side of the fence. The trap is not being grateful and present with what we have in front of us. To think, “it would be better..” or “If only…” is where frustration and regret can creep in…

Regardless of all the advice that people give you on your major decisions in life, you ultimately have to decide in the end for yourself.

The decision is ultimately up to you

We did our best to list all the realities of starting a ketamine clinic – both the good and the bad. Before we started our clinic, we made sure to factor in every aspect of our lives as to whether this new venture would be worth it for us or not. Remember that we all live different lives and have different experiences. What worked for us may not work for you. So take note of everything that we wrote down here and see how it all applies to your current life. 

And when you look within yourself, only then will you be able to decide if you should start a ketamine clinic or keep working in the hospital.

Think that starting a ketamine clinic is your calling? Join our email list and be notified about the next free webinar and open registration for Ketamine StartUp.

Have you ever wondered what life is like outside working in a regular hospital job? Have you ever considered leaving your hospital job to start a ketamine clinic? Are you wondering if it’s even worth the risk? In this blog post, we lay out all the facts for you to help you decide.

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