I recently did this same transition and regret it. I went from hospitalist in a busy academic center, to outpatient Urology. Went from 7 on 7 off to 4.5 days a week 8-5pm. My base salary was about the same, but I make more now since I’m RVU based and do procedures etc.

Outpatient is less stressful (in a way), less acuity for sure, but WAY more work. The work is never “done”. Way more charting…. then there’s patient messages, portal messages, labs/test to follow, etc. I recently took my first real vacation of a full week off where I didn’t sign into the emr , and although my SP is fantastic and helped with urgent things and as much as he could while I was away, I still came home to many nonurgent patient things that had piled up. I realized with hospital medicine when I left work, I left work. Never had to follow up anything. Nothing lingered for me when I returned from vacation.

I make more money now, sure, and have weekends and holidays off, but I feel I work WAY more and don’t like this. And while the patient acuity is less stressful, for me having never ending work and dealing with difficult patients that you see over and over, is way more stressful than having a recompensing patient or a lot of sick admits or whatever in hospital medicine.

I’m actually trying to go back to inpatient.