September is a natural checkpoint for dermatology providers to evaluate where they’re headed—and what they should be doing now to create more options later. Summer schedules settle down. A new academic year is underway. Practices begin looking at year-end priorities and setting goals for the following year. And for dermatology providers, it is a good time to zoom out from immediate demands, taking stock of career satisfaction and reconnecting with your professional goals.
In fact, one of the most valuable things you can do for your career is to routinely evaluate your current position and become aware of your options before ever feeling pressured to make a change.
Whether you are an established dermatologist questioning if your current position will allow you to explore a subspecialty or an experienced dermatology NP/PA contemplating relocating in 2027, the next several months can be used to gather information, clarify priorities and put yourself in a stronger position to make decisions when the time is right.
Think of September as your fall career reset.
1. Is Your Current Position Still Working for You?
Career dissatisfaction does not always look like wanting to quit.
Sometimes it is obvious. The workload has become unsustainable, support has deteriorated or compensation no longer reflects what you are producing.
Other times, the disconnect is subtler…
- Maybe you still like the people you work with, but your schedule no longer fits your life.
- Maybe you have become interested in Mohs, cosmetics, leadership or another area of dermatology that your current practice cannot support.
- Maybe you have reached a point where partnership matters more to you than it did three years ago.
- Or perhaps you have simply outgrown the role you originally accepted.
That is why it is useful to periodically evaluate your position based on the job you are actually doing today—not the opportunity you accepted when you first signed your contract.
Look at the reality of your workload.
A four-day workweek sounded ideal until those four days routinely stretch well beyond clinic hours.
Think about what your workweek actually requires:
- How many patients are you regularly seeing?
- How much charting or documentation follows you home?
- Is administrative time built into your schedule?
- Who handles patient messages, refills, labs and callbacks?
- Has patient volume increased without a corresponding increase in support?
- Are you able to leave work at work most days?
Schedule alone does not determine work-life balance. Patient volume, staffing, administrative expectations and documentation all shape how sustainable a position feels.
Revisit your compensation.
Compensation deserves a periodic review even when you are not considering another job.
Ask yourself:
- Do you understand exactly how you are being paid?
- If your compensation includes productivity or collections, do you know how those numbers are calculated?
- Has your patient volume, procedural mix or level of responsibility changed since your compensation was last evaluated?
A provider seeing significantly more patients, generating more collections or taking on additional responsibilities may be in a very different position than when the original compensation structure was negotiated.
Understanding your current compensation also gives you a much better foundation for comparing future opportunities.
Evaluate the support around you.
The quality of a dermatology position is often shaped by what happens around the provider.
Experienced medical assistants, scribes, nursing support, front-office efficiency and strong administrative systems can dramatically affect both productivity and quality of life.
Rather than asking only whether support staff are available, ask whether the support structure is actually keeping pace with what is expected of you.
- Are you spending significant time on tasks that could reasonably be handled elsewhere?
- Are staffing shortages affecting your clinic?
- Do you have the resources necessary to practice efficiently without constantly compensating for operational gaps?
These are not minor details. They directly affect the experience of practicing medicine every day.
Consider where you still have room to grow.
Your professional priorities will change throughout your career.
- Perhaps you want greater autonomy over your schedule.
- Maybe you would like to introduce a new service line, expand cosmetics, perform more procedures, mentor APPs, pursue leadership responsibilities or eventually become an owner.
Ask yourself whether your current environment can realistically support the next stage of your career.
A position does not have to be a bad one for you to recognize that it may no longer provide what you need next.
2. What Would Actually Need to Change for Another Opportunity to Be Worth It?
Identifying what’s not working in your current position is only half of the exercise.
The more important question is:
What would another opportunity need to offer for changing jobs to genuinely improve your career?
That distinction matters because every job comes with tradeoffs.
A higher salary may come with heavier patient volume.
A four-day schedule may involve longer clinic days.
A partnership opportunity may require a longer-term commitment.
A desirable location may offer fewer practice options or a higher cost of living.
Without clear priorities, it is easy to become distracted by one attractive feature and overlook everything surrounding it.
Instead, define the conditions that would make a move worthwhile.
For one provider, that might mean reducing daily patient volume from 45 to 32.
For another, it could mean joining a practice where cosmetics can become a meaningful part of the schedule.
Someone else may care most about having two dedicated medical assistants, avoiding evening charting or finding a realistic path to partnership.
Try separating your priorities into three categories.
- What must improve? These are the issues that would need to meaningfully change before you would consider leaving. Examples might include workload, compensation, clinical support, leadership, autonomy or geographic location.
- What would you strongly prefer? These are features that would make an opportunity more attractive but would not necessarily determine the decision. Perhaps you prefer a four-day schedule but would consider 4.5 days for substantially lower patient volume. Or maybe cosmetics are appealing, but not essential if the overall opportunity is strong.
- What are you no longer willing to compromise on? Experience often teaches providers more about what they do not want. If you know you are no longer willing to routinely chart at night, practice without adequate medical assistant support or work under a compensation model you do not fully understand, write that down.
This gives you an evaluation framework before another opportunity ever reaches your inbox. And that framework can keep a future job search from becoming a comparison of titles, salaries and sign-on bonuses alone.
3. Start Exploring Before You Need to Leave
One of the biggest misconceptions surrounding career planning is that exploring the market means you have decided to change jobs.
It does not. Career exploration is not the same thing as launching a job search.
You can learn what opportunities exist without applying.
You can have a confidential conversation with a recruiter without committing to leave.
You can research compensation structures, practice models and geographic markets simply because you want to understand your options.
In many cases, that is the best time to do it.
Providers who wait until they are completely frustrated with their current role are often making decisions under pressure. They may feel urgency to leave, which can make the first reasonable opportunity feel more attractive than it otherwise would.
Exploring earlier gives you something more valuable: perspective.
If a 2027 move is even a possibility, consider using the next few months to quietly prepare.
Update your CV.
Do this while you are not urgently applying for positions. Add recent roles, procedures, certifications, leadership experience, areas of clinical interest and professional accomplishments.
A current CV gives you the ability to respond quickly if the right opportunity appears, even if you were not actively looking for it.
Understand the market.
What kinds of dermatology opportunities are available in the regions you would realistically consider?
How common are four-day schedules? Partnership tracks? Collections-based compensation? Dedicated scribes? Cosmetic opportunities?
You do not need to memorize the entire market. You simply want enough context to recognize when an opportunity is unusually strong—or unusually weak.
Identify your geographic possibilities.
Rather than limiting yourself to one ideal city, think more broadly.
Where would you genuinely consider living for the right position?
You may have:
- Preferred markets
- Acceptable alternatives
- Locations you would consider only for an exceptional opportunity
- Regions that are completely off the table
Defining those categories early can make the search considerably more productive later.
Learn the compensation language.
Dermatology compensation can involve guaranteed salaries, collections percentages, productivity thresholds, bonuses, sign-on incentives, partnership structures and combinations of several of these.
A large guarantee does not automatically make one opportunity better than another.
Likewise, an attractive collections percentage means very little if you do not understand patient demand, ramp-up expectations, payer mix or what happens when the guarantee ends.
The time to learn how these structures work is before you are evaluating an offer.
Pay attention to the opportunities that catch your attention.
You do not have to apply to learn from them.
If you repeatedly find yourself drawn to positions with lower patient volume, ownership opportunities, strong cosmetic programs or a particular geographic region, that pattern may be telling you something about where your priorities are moving.
Career exploration can clarify what you want even when you ultimately decide to stay exactly where you are.
4. Build Your 2027 Career Criteria Now
By the time you seriously consider a career change, you should already know what you are evaluating.
That is the purpose of creating career criteria now. Think of it as your own personal scorecard for future opportunities.
Instead of asking, Is this a good dermatology job?, you can ask a much more useful question: Is this a better opportunity for me?
Use the following areas to define what that means.
Schedule and patient volume
What does a sustainable workweek look like?
Consider:
- Preferred number of clinic days
- Realistic daily patient volume
- Administrative time
- Charting expectations
- Call responsibilities
- Weekend coverage
Be specific. “Better work-life balance” is difficult to evaluate. “No more than 35 patients per day with protected administrative time” is much easier.
Clinical mix
What do you want to spend your time doing?
Perhaps your ideal practice includes primarily general dermatology with some cosmetics.
Maybe you want more surgery. Perhaps you want an environment where you can eventually introduce lasers, patch testing, hair loss services or another area of interest.
Your next role should not necessarily look exactly like your current one.
Support structure
Identify the level of support you need to practice efficiently.
That could include:
- Number of medical assistants per provider
- Scribe or documentation support
- Nursing coverage
- Front-office staffing
- Centralized administrative resources
- Referral or scheduling support
Ask not only what staffing exists, but how it functions in practice.
Compensation
Know what you want to understand before discussing numbers.
Consider the guarantee, productivity structure, collections percentage, bonus formula and longer-term earning potential.
If ownership or partnership matters to you, understand how that opportunity works as well.
The goal is not simply to identify the highest possible number. It is to determine whether the compensation structure aligns with the workload and expectations attached to it.
Autonomy and professional growth
Think about how much control you want over your schedule, clinical mix, patient volume and practice decisions.
If leadership, partnership, teaching or developing a subspecialty matters to you, include those priorities now rather than hoping they appear later.
Geography
Separate where you would prefer to live from where you could realistically build a satisfying life and career.
Sometimes the strongest opportunity exists 30 minutes outside the city you originally had in mind.
Sometimes a market you had never considered offers the exact practice environment you have been looking for.
Being geographically flexible does not mean abandoning your priorities. It means understanding where flexibility is possible.
Your non-negotiables
Finally, identify the conditions you already know would make a position unsustainable.
Perhaps that is excessive patient volume. Limited support. Routine evening charting. No clinical autonomy. An unclear compensation formula. No path for professional growth.
Experience gives you data. Use it.
The Goal Is Not Necessarily to Leave. It Is to Have Options.
A fall career reset does not need to end with a resignation letter.
You may take stock of your current position and realize that you are still exactly where you want to be.
You may identify one or two issues that can be addressed through a conversation with your current practice.
You may explore the market and decide that staying another year is the right choice.
Or you may discover that what you want next is available—and begin preparing to pursue it when the timing makes sense.
All of those outcomes are valuable.
The point is to avoid waiting until circumstances force you to think about your career.
September offers a natural opportunity to zoom out, evaluate what your professional life actually looks like and decide what you want the next year to move you toward.
You do not need to know exactly what your career will look like in 2027.
But knowing what is working, what needs to change and what you would look for in your next opportunity can give you considerably more control over the decisions you make when the time comes.
Not actively job searching, but curious about what the dermatology market could offer you?
myDermRecruiter works exclusively in dermatology, helping dermatologists, Mohs surgeons, dermatology nurse practitioners and dermatology physician assistants understand the market, explore opportunities and make informed career decisions.
Sometimes the best time to learn what is available is before you need anything to change.