hello welcome back i'm mama doctor jones
a board certified obgyn imam to four
and today we're not talking about
pregnancy or gynecology
maybe a little but not much we're
talking about my life as a nomadic
doctor because it occurred to me
as some of you have been asking why my
background changes so often that if you
don't follow me on instagram you may
have no idea
what i do in in this life i mean i know
probably if you follow this youtube
channel which if you don't
subscribe or don't but we'd love to have
you so consider subscribing if you like
it here
then you know i'm a ob gyn i do
pregnancy and gynecology care as a
physician
but you may not know exactly how my life
setup is
i wanted to explain that to you i am a
nomadic doctor and it is only somewhat
on purpose so let me start at the very
beginning
many years ago my husband and i visited
new zealand and we wanted to go there
and stay there
move there for a period of time and
we've been trying to figure out how to
make that happen for a really long time
in fact when i was getting out of
residency we strongly considered going
there but because their medical system
is set up a little bit different
i had done four years of undergrad four
years of med school and four years of ob
gyn residency
but in the united states you practice
for one to two years before you take
your oral board exams
and in that time you're called board
eligible after taking
your oral exams you are board certified
if you pass
and so because the setup is a little
different here if i went to new zealand
i would have had to take
a senior level training position at the
time i just really wasn't interested and
i was so ready to get out
and be in practice and get board
certified and collect my cases and do my
oral boards and be done with it
that we decided to take a private
practice job here we knew that was
temporary and i
really really loved my private practice
but we wanted to do something a little
bit
different and we kind of planned on
moving internationally taking a job in
new zealand at some point something like
that
but about halfway through 2018 maybe
early 2019 we started tossing around
this idea
of if we could get my loans paid off and
be financially secure enough could we
take a one-year
sabbatical just to travel the world and
we figured out how to make that happen
including some international locum work
or prn work meaning where i take
shifts at different hospitals in
different places so we finally got loans
paid off
and then in december of 2019 i let my
job my private practice that i really
enjoyed
know that i was going to be leaving in
may of 2020.
following that my husband quit his job
and he started doing contract work he's
a web developer
and so he can pretty much work from
anywhere and we started trying to figure
out exactly what we were going to do
we sold our house we gave away
everything we own we had one-way tickets
to hawaii where i was putting on a
conference with my
pinnacle which is a women in medicine
group and
then we were headed to japan after that
and mind you
we have four kids they are eight eight
four and two now
and we had planned all of this to happen
right along with them
obviously we weren't going to leave our
children here for a year and so
we did all that and then the pandemic
happened and so
we were left in may i had no job they
had already filled my position there
i had a non-compete which means i
couldn't practice within a certain
mileage of the hospital that i was at
and we had sold our house so we had to
move
we lived for several months in a one
bedroom cabin all six of us
on my mom's property and that was
bananas we quickly realized that
although we love living a rather
minimalist lifestyle
that was too small and so we decided
that
i was going to take a job doing prn
hospitals work meaning i pick up shifts
at different hospitals
to do labor and delivery help when they
need it i'm delivering babies doing
c-sections seeing
er consults um ectopic pregnancies
gynecology visits etc
but i don't have like a clinic based
practice and so i started doing that and
we started living in airbnbs
for the rest of 2020 and now up until
2021 we have lived in airbnbs
pretty much moving about every 30 days
and i have helped at various hospitals
when they were in need
of more coverage in the ob gyn
department so
it's been a little bit bananas part of
the way through that process we bought
a giant van which we call gav in front
of the children which stands for giant
ass van
and so everything we own fits in gav
and a 10 by 10 storage unit and we move
all the time
and even though it's only a little bit
of stuff per person
because there's six of us it is still a
big deal and this is the sixth place
we've lived since the beginning of 2021
which is just insane
not the sixth like town but the sixth
house that we've lived in
luckily this is a longer term rental and
so we got to be here for a couple of
months which is good because
i needed a little bit more stability
it's not good for my psyche moving
quite that often i'm now looking at a
well i have a position for the summer in
hawaii and i'm just waiting on my
medical license to come through for
hawaii and we should be spending
june and july covering a clinic there
and i'll actually get to be in full
scope practice again which i'm really
really excited about
editing side note we got moved to
beautiful sunny hawaii
and our jones traveling circus nomadic
travel
vlog is launched on the second channel
we'll be posting our first video
tomorrow so if you're interested click
on over there the link is in the
description box below
that scared me it's just a little
squishy guy
he's not scary he just scared me because
i accidentally stuck my hand on him
honestly i thought i was putting my hand
in dog poop or something so
okay bye and after that
we don't really know what we're gonna do
we don't plan our life that much ahead
we're kind of waiting to see what
happens with the pandemic etc
but i have interviewed for a position in
new zealand which would be
not like a forever position but a little
longer term than the short
locums i've been doing which are like
one or two months and so i'm really
excited about that i'll keep you all
updated
it's a long process new zealand's health
system is very different than the united
states and
it works very differently because of
that and it's a government job
i've interviewed i had a second
interview they've asked for my
references i'm crossing my fingers that
it works out but i just
i don't know yet so we just have to wait
and see so i know there will be lots of
comments of
oh are you moving to new zealand when
how long are you staying is it going to
happen i don't know yet but i will
definitely keep you all updated
i hope to continue my channel through
all this i mean
i've managed to continue it through all
of the moving but
i i do know that maybe in hawaii because
i'm going to be working a more hectic
schedule
i might have to cut back on posting i
don't know we'll just have to see
posting things like this make me happy i
like just having a conversation with you
all talking to you all and i don't think
that we've done this
recently enough so maybe we'll try to
in-state like a live
session each month or something like
that if y'all would be interested in
that but
in the meantime i do a lot of live q and
a's on instagram almost every friday
we're
either live or answering questions and
stories there so i'd love to have you
follow over there if you're interested
and i hope that this has been an
informative video for you if you work in
medicine and you're interested
in this nomadic lifestyle i'm happy to
answer any questions that you have it's
been
a lot easier than i expected to find
these kind of positions so
yeah i mean it's fun i love it and
i hope that it works out that we do
actually get to travel the world this
year
and we'll keep you updated thanks for
being here i will see you next monday
oh and if you like it here subscribe i
feel like the channel's been a little
quieter lately which is
totally fine but i don't know
it would make me happy if you subscribe
and help me hit a million subscribers
sometime in the next couple years that
would thrill me so
thank you