For as long as Dr. Amy Rontal can remember she wanted to be a physician. Although there were no doctors in her family, she naturally gravitated towards math and science. While at the University of Michigan Medical School, Amy met her future husband and began to consider specialty choices. Open discussions about quality of life, flexibility, and parenting as a doctor were rare 15 years ago and the concept of work-life balance was rarely discussed. The work until your drop mentality was in full force and the consideration of lifestyle in choice of residency was taboo. But Dr. Rontal knew she could work hard, be an educator, a leader and dedicated physician while also being present and available for her future friends and family. Although the details were blurry, her vision was clear. She would find a way to be committed and dedicated to her career, her spouse, her children, and herself.
Dr. Rontal chose Emergency Medicine, got married, and had 3 children (now ages 8, 10, and 13 years old). She is a hospital-employed physician at a busy high-volume, high-acuity Emergency Department in Michigan. She and her husband, who is an ENT, realized that even though they were a 2 physician family they did not want to have live-in child care. Dr. Rontal works part-time as a nocturnist (8 to 10 shifts per month). This allows her to send her children off to school each morning and put them to bed at each night. Her continued passion for the practice of medicine is palpable as is her deep commitment to excellence in patient care and resident training. One can easily imagine her as the calm presence in the eye of the storm, excited about the mystery of how the night will unfold. Emergency Medicine has allowed Dr. Rontal to have a fulfilling career and raise a family on her own terms. It is just as easy to imagine Amy “All In” at home, focused and fully present, no buzzing pager threatening to pull her away from the joyful chaos of being with and caring for her family and herself.
A few years ago Dr. Adam Rosh and his family moved to Michigan. He was fortunate enough to move in next door to Dr. Rontal. “We realized our daughters were same age and in preschool together and when his wife asked what did I do and I said I was an EM physicians and she said my husband is an ER doctor! We have been good friends every since. I remember going out to dinner with Adam saying ‘I have this idea for a company’ and that turned out to be Rosh Review.”
Dr. Rosh is a physician entrepreneur (as well as a husband and father of 2) who is genuinely committed to utilizing technology, imagination, creativity, cutting edge adult learning research, and community to help people reach their highest goals and achieve their dreams. Rosh Review at first glance seems like a test preparation company. But it’s more than that. Dr. Rosh has built a culture of engagement and a community dedicated to bringing out the best in its employees and its customers. Rosh Review is a value-driven educational resource with an authentic mission to provide access to the highest-level quality content and questions to students across the globe (and in fact many residents in underdeveloped nations are given this resource for free).
It didn’t take long for Adam to recognize the doctor next door was a perfect fit for Rosh Review. With time opening up and her 3 children in full-time school, Dr. Rontal began writing and researching for Rosh Review last year. She embodies a core principal of Rosh Review – always learning and continuously self-improving – as well as one of Dr. Rosh’s fundamental principals – radical responsiveness. Doctors field questions via email 24 hours a day, 7 days a week with the goals of answering 50% within 8 hours and 100% within 24 hours. Dr. Rontal, as Dr. Rosh predicted, always goes one step further, researching questions from multiple sources, responding to questions and feedback from students and colleagues quickly and with invaluable clinical pearls and test-taking wisdom in every carefully thought out reply. Amy reported that “subscribers feel like they have a personal on-line tutor.”
Dr. Rontal has started the next phase of her physician career piecing together 2 part time jobs while still being available and flexible for her family. “Rosh Review has given me an opportunity to produce amazing work, to work from home on my own schedule, to be intellectually stimulated and keep up on the latest medical literature. to be engaged as writer and educator. It provides a great balance. I would never want to give up my clinical time because I really love that but it has been a great addition to my work life. I feel that I am really making a difference in how people learn and that I am part of something bigger than myself. In the ER and with Rosh I feel part of a team. This is not something I thought I would be doing 5 years ago but it is something I can see myself doing for a long time into the future.“
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