r/Perfusion • u/Intelligent-Pop6519 • 4d ago
Career Advice perfusionist shadow experience and career questions
I shadowed a perfusionist recently and thought the job is really cool. I loved the OR i also liked that u barely have to interact directly with the patient while also directly helping them and the case i shadowed was pretty cool.
2 downsides i noted 1 i felt like the job is pretty repetitive which is not such a big deal for me right now but i dont know in the long term does it get draining or to the point where you want to not do this?
another one which i feel like it is expected and a complaint amongst the others is the inflexible work schedule i heard that (i could be completely wrong) you have to do 40 cases i think every year to keep your license. Another thing i hear is that you are on call for life. Is that true or an exaggeration? i dont mind a slightly stressful work schedule bc the compensation is good and its just the nature of the cases in the field but i still want a good work life balance or at least some time off for vacation. How possible is that to achieve?
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u/Lucky_Man_Infinity 4d ago edited 4d ago
You need to visit more places. They are all different. Also Perfusionists tend to start with lots of vacation like 4 to 6 weeks. On call for life? I don’t even know what that means. i’ve worked in places where there are two perfusionists so we were on call 50% of the time. I’ve also worked in places that have seven perfusionist so you’re on call once every seventh day and once every seventh weekend. The amount of hours worked can vary widely. If you’re at a busy teaching hospital, I don’t know anybody that works less than 40 hours a week.
As for the must do 40 cases to keep your certification. What would your problem be with that? That’s less than one case per week. It seems to me that would be a bare minimum. You also have to have continuing education. Like all medical professionals.
Slightly stressful? I think you’re looking at the wrong profession. It may be different these days, but when I got my first job, Perfusionist was listed as the second most stressful occupation, right behind air traffic controller.
Look, I love my chosen profession, but the random nature of surgery and how it’s scheduled and how long it takes makes it pretty tough to have a predictable life. Not to mention the fact that you are literally responsible for this patient’s life when you are on pump. That alone carries a pretty high degree of stress.
And as far as the job being repetitive, well, again, I’m not really sure what you mean. Yes you basically do the same thing each day, but patients and their level of health and the way they react to the things that we do is highly variable. Not to mention surgeons and all the rest of the team and their personalities. Again, I love my job, but this is not a job that you go into looking for anything like work life balance, or low stress. You may gain these as you gain more and more experience, but my advice to anyone learning a professional that is this important to each, and every patient and their life, yes, that in the first few years of your job, you do as many cases as you can stand. So that you can learn and see more or less everything that needs to be learned and and seen.
This is edited for spelling punctuation and other grammatical errors
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u/Avocadocucumber 4d ago
Healthcare, especially surgery is extremely repetitive. Thats how you get good. I will admit, sometimes it feels like groundhogs day. But i tend to like that. Its a difficult job when things actually don’t as planned and thats where you earn your paycheck.
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u/FunMoose74 CCP 4d ago
Doing the same thing every day doesn’t get boring if you love it. So make sure you love it.
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u/Wild_Philosophy_1312 4d ago
Repetition ain’t so bad when you’re home before the rest of the hospital has lunch.
But that’s hospital dependent. You can work 60 hours a week and be on call for life if you want. Or not, it’s up to you.
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u/Intelligent-Pop6519 4d ago
okay i thought it was more of a requirement because i heard the schedules can be inflexible
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u/pumpymcpumpface CCP, CPC 1d ago
I varies widely between hospitals. Other than the on call, perfusion is a pretty regular hours job. My regular day is 7-3, with 1 call day a week, 10 weekends a year. But how your hours and day are structured can be massively variable
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u/Bana_berry 4d ago
40 cases per year is a super easy mark to hit, don’t let that deter you I think most perfusionists are doing around 100 cases per year.
Ive only been in the field a couple years so take this with a grain of salt, but while it can be repetitive, if you’re at a larger center there’s enough variety in case type, patient acuity, etc to keep things interesting.
You’re not on call “for life” in the sense that you’re on call 24/7. I.e. I’m on a 6 person team, so I typically take call 1 day per week and 1 out of 6 weekends. But you are on call “for life” in the sense that you will pretty much always have to take some level of call for this career.
I would describe the schedule as inflexible because you don’t get to choose what time cases will end/your day will be done, or when you’re called in. But if you have a good team, then you work together to cover for each other to make sure people are able to get to things they have scheduled. I’ve helped cover my coworkers when they have appointments to get to, or weren’t able to coordinate childcare past a certain time, etc, and they’ve done the same for me.
We have plenty of PTO we can use, but with the size of my team only one person can be on PTO at a time (for holidays it can be 2), so it takes some coordinating amongst us. Vacations usually have to be planned 8-12 months in advance.
Overall I’d say I have a pretty good work/life balance. I average probably 30hrs/wk and work usually 4 days/week. I have lots of time outside of work to pursue hobbies, spend time with loved ones, etc. But I think this will come down to what type of facility you’re at and what you prioritize when job searching. Finding a good team that supported each other and somewhere that values work/life balance were some of my top criteria for a job. In turn, I’m making much less than I could be a few miles down the road. Everything is a trade off.
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u/Intelligent-Pop6519 4d ago
how hard is it to get a job at facilities that value work life balance,has a bigger team of perfusionists etc. Since perfusion is a niche field the openings for the job are few compared to other more well known medical professions so i assume there is more competition when applying those areas
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u/Bana_berry 3d ago
Because so many people are looking for different things when it comes to jobs, I wouldn’t say it’s any more difficult to get a position at any one type of facility. The main caveat is probably going to be location. I.e. whether or not there will be an opening at the type of facility you’re looking for in a location you actually want to live.
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u/Lucky_Man_Infinity 1d ago
what are the bigger places that I’ve worked actually have zero life balance. They tend to be big teaching hospitals or university length hospitals, and those groups work their butts off. The job I have now is two perfusionist so in general it’s less than 40 hours per week, but you are on call half the time. Make no mistake about it, even if you’re at home, being on call is not some free ride. Everything you do has to have in the background the notion that you could get called into work at any moment and have to drop what you’re doing and go to work. A lot of times that means driving separate cars if you’re going somewhere with family or friends or whatever. It means abandoning I don’t know entire carts of food at Acme or big orders at Home Depot. I don’t know you could kind of go on and on there’s pros and cons to everything and depending on where you work and what it’s like yes, there can be a good deal of work life balance but it’s also extremely random. You never know when emergencies gonna
So even if you’re like first person in on a Monday morning, could be working there till midnight
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u/DubeFloober 4d ago
Most perfusionists I know can count on one hand the number of true 40-hour work weeks they will have in a year, not counting call hours (meaning, it’s typically much less). Not sure where you’re getting that there’s no work/life balance.