Interesting PRN job

[Psychferlyfe3000]

Hi all,

I am trying to find a job to supplement my fellowship income. I spoke to a recruiter today who described a job in which I would evaluate parents to see whether or not they can regain custody of their children. It is $600 / patient with evals taking 1 hour + supposedly 1 hour of paperwork. I have very little idea about what doing this would entail, but my initial impression is that it sounds risky. Eg, if I give the parent the okay and they harm their child, I could be liable for that potentially. Any thoughts?

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[comp1]

It sounds absolutely horrific and is paying roughly the average rate for a psychiatrist. Pass. Forget you being sued for them harming the kid. I mean sure, could happen, but unlikely. On the other hand, you WILL be dragged into any family court related matters, potentially all over your state. Is this employer paying you for for that or is 8 hours at the court house waiting on your dime? And don't trust anything said about expert versus fact witnesses. I heard it too. Courts don't care and will subpoena you regardless. You can try to argue and just end up fined for contempt. It's lose-lose. If you want to spend all your time in court matters unrelated to patient care, at least get paid well and go into corrections.

 

[Celexa]

I think we have a winner for the worst job offer ever.

 

[ObsequiousAplomb]

$600 for at least two hours of your time in a high-risk sub-field you have no experience? When you could easily be charging double that cash for non-forensic settings? Yeah, that sounds awful.

 

[nexus73]

Can only imagine what the client is paying in total for this evaluation. Likely $3000+

Any you’d only be getting $600 plus all the headache

 

[TexasPhysician]

Run away. This is truly terrible. I’m CAP, and I refuse to do such evals regardless of price. In our field, these are the high risk evals that have high liability, increased odds of court time to explain how you reached your conclusion with the objectivity behind it, and increased odds of violence to you.

Imagine doing an eval that you aren’t trained to do and coming to the conclusion that the father isn’t suited for custody. Father loses visitation. Who will father blame?

 

[clausewitz2]

At a minimum it seems like you would absolutely need a guaranteed hourly rate in writing for any time spent traveling to, waiting at, or testifying in court regarding any matter related to the evaluation. Otherwise this is a great way to make sure you lose many a productive clinical hour for no compensation.

 

[PsyDr]

1) This rate is way too low. A bottom of the barrel, absolute BS, private pay child custody evaluation would start at $3k. Many are charging north of $15k.

2) Your chances of being called into court approach 100%. Factor that into your hourly.

3) The financial risks of this are high. Your chances of being sued or getting a board complaint are high. Since you don't know what this entails, it would be reasonable to assume you don't know how to follow the standard of care. Since some standards require observation of parenting, how is that factored in to hours? What is your knowledge base for how expert witnesses can form opinions, and FRE 702? Hint: if you don't know what those are, then your first case can sue you. How does the rate factor in expenses to defend against board complaints, that can affect your malpractice rates, and your credentialing forever? What is your financial status to hire an attorney to defend you in malpractice suits? Some providers have high rates so that they can afford their own attorney.

4) The real hours: 1hr face to face, 1hr report writing, 1hr of attorney phone calls, 30 mins arranging to get served, 1hr driving to court, 3 hrs waiting in the halls of the court, 1hr driving back from court, another hour of phone calls, etc. That is before getting a board complaint or getting sued.

 

[Merovinge]

I hope your title is intentionally click-bait to get more people to respond and not your thoughts on this. You must be training somewhere without a significant forensic CAP presence if this interesting. You've gotten all the advice you need on this thread already, but if you are seriously considering this talk to a forensic CAP, it's almost like there is a fellowship that exactly addresses these patients.

Just to give you some perspective on what you are seeing, this is similar to:
Hey guys, I got this offer to evaluate pregnant teenagers using IV heroin/fent, it would be a 1 hour eval and 1 hour write up to determine what level of care they need and how their opioid use should be managed during pregnancy and the postpartum period.

 

[Celexa]

I hope your title is intentionally click-bait to get more people to respond and not your thoughts on this. You must be training somewhere without a significant forensic CAP presence if this interesting. You've gotten all the advice you need on this thread already, but if you are seriously considering this talk to a forensic CAP, it's almost like there is a fellowship that exactly addresses these patients.

Just to give you some perspective on what you are seeing, this is similar to:
Hey guys, I got this offer to evaluate pregnant teenagers using IV heroin/fent, it would be a 1 hour eval and 1 hour write up to determine what level of care they need and how their opioid use should be managed during pregnancy and the postpartum period.

Lol just a pregnant teen with opioid use disorder? I'd say it's more analogous to evaluating a pregnant teen with opioid and sedative use disorder, severe hx of trauma, alleged ADHD, unstably housed, and pts bio mom has a documented history of multiple episodes of postpartum psychosis. And also whatever you decide at least one person will be furious at you.

 

[ObsequiousAplomb]

Lol just a pregnant teen with opioid use disorder? I'd say it's more analogous to evaluating a pregnant teen with opioid and sedative use disorder, severe hx of trauma, alleged ADHD, unstably housed, and pts bio mom has a documented history of multiple episodes of postpartum psychosis. And also whatever you decide at least one person will be furious at you.

I'll take it one step further and say that's the patient, but the OP is doing the custody eval for that case. The patient's dad has bipolar disorder and mom has schizophrenia. The dad is a Jehovah's witness and the mom is Amish.

 

[Merovinge]

I'll take it one step further and say that's the patient, but the OP is doing the custody eval for that case. The patient's dad has bipolar disorder and mom has schizophrenia. The dad is a Jehovah's witness and the mom is Amish.

And the patient has a diagnosed intellectual disability with an IQ around 55...

 

[calvnandhobbs68]

Hi all,

I am trying to find a job to supplement my fellowship income. I spoke to a recruiter today who described a job in which I would evaluate parents to see whether or not they can regain custody of their children. It is $600 / patient with evals taking 1 hour + supposedly 1 hour of paperwork. I have very little idea about what doing this would entail, but my initial impression is that it sounds risky. Eg, if I give the parent the okay and they harm their child, I could be liable for that potentially. Any thoughts?

Also what? You're still IN fellowship (I'm hoping forensics or CAP given this job...) and you're looking at this? Dude you have to go to court and you're gonna get destroyed, I can hear the lawyer now....

I hope this is a troll post too lol. Otherwise good thing you asked.

 

[comp1]

To be fair, it would be a lot more concerning if it was someone in years of practice posting this question than someone in fellowship, but concur, plaintiff's attorneys would eat OP alive (and get paid 5x as much as the OP did to do so).

 

[Psychferlyfe3000]

Well, I'm still in residency actually. I just was aware that I had no idea what this type of job would entail. But, it seems pretty clear that it is a terrible job, so I won't pursue it any further!

 

[annoyedpsychiatrist]

Yeah I would rather do disability evals then this. I can think of all the ways this can go wrong. And I agree, theyre probably giving you a small piece of the pie for something you could do yourself and get paid way more for. Not that I would be super eager to do this sort of thing. Not even liability, consider ethical impacts and how that would affect you wondering if your decision was really the best one for the kid.

 

[Merovinge]

It actually seems wantonly unethical to have residents performing these types of evaluations. I am amazed the court is fine with that. Would be a bad idea in CAP fellowship, but one can be a BE psychiatrist there. For a resident, my words should not be a forum.