The Rise of Physician Side Projects
Something Has Shifted
Five years ago, if one of my coaching clients told me they were launching a newsletter, I would have been mildly surprised. Now it feels like every other conversation includes a podcast, a Substack, a consulting LLC, or a health-tech startup in some stage of development. Physician side projects are no longer the exception in academic medicine. They are becoming the norm.
The question is no longer whether this is happening. It is whether institutions and faculty are ready for what it means.
Why Now
Several forces are converging. The pandemic taught physicians that their institutions could restructure their roles overnight without much consultation. That experience left a mark. A 2023 study in JAMA Network Open found that physician job satisfaction had dropped to historic lows, with autonomy and professional fulfillment cited as the biggest gaps. When the system stops giving people meaning, they go find it somewhere else.
At the same time, the barriers to building something have collapsed. You can launch a podcast from your phone. A Substack costs nothing. An LLC takes twenty minutes and a filing fee. Faculty entrepreneurship in academic medicine no longer requires venture capital or a sabbatical. It requires a laptop and a few evening hours.
What Physician Side Projects Tell Us About Academic Medicine
I see the rise of physician side projects as a signal, not a problem. It tells us that academic physicians are hungry for creative work, professional identity beyond their institutional role, and some measure of control over their careers.
That hunger is not new. What is new is that physicians are actually acting on it instead of just complaining in the doctors' lounge. Dorie Clark makes this point well in The Long Game: professionals who invest in long-term career assets outside their day job are not distracted. They are playing a smarter game than the people who put all their eggs in one institutional basket.
The Risk Nobody Wants to Talk About
There is a risk, though. Not every side project is strategic. I have watched faculty spread themselves dangerously thin chasing an audience or a revenue stream that never materializes. The physicians who burn out fastest are often the ones who added a side project on top of an already unsustainable workload without subtracting anything.
A side project works when it replaces something draining, not when it stacks on top of everything else.
The Bottom Line
The trend toward physician side projects is real, it is accelerating, and I think it is mostly healthy. It reflects a generation of academic physicians who refuse to let one institution define the boundaries of their professional lives. Institutions that see this as disloyalty will lose people. The ones that see it as a sign of talent and ambition will find ways to support it.
If you are thinking about launching something on the side, the smartest move is to get clear on why before you get busy on how. Check out our individual coaching options.
