This week marks five years since I stopped practicing ob/gyn. I like to use this anniversary to reflect on what I’ve learned since I hung up my white coat.
What I’ve realized is that I was a classic product of my dysfunctional environment. The current culture of medicine is set up in a way that keeps physicians from figuring out a plan B if plan A doesn’t yield the lives we envisioned. When you aren’t one of the fortunate few who automatically loves every aspect of life after medical training, it’s tough to navigate to that place with the tools most of us have.
It wasn’t that practicing obstetrics and gynecology was too hard. Being challenged has never been an issue for me as long as I feel it’s worth it. The problem was that I struggled to put my finger on exactly what made medicine not worth it to me. Being unable to gain that clarity is what made it so difficult for me to fix it from the inside.
Rather than detailing my personal reasons for leaving medicine, I want to discuss something more general. There are recurring themes I’ve noticed, in myself and others, that keep healthcare professionals stuck in neutral when it comes to designing the lives we want.
Loyalty. Unfortunately a lot of physicians are too loyal to the wrong people. We often experience all sorts of angst about how changing any aspect of our practice may negatively impact others.
We don’t want to abandon our patients or leave our colleagues in the lurch when it comes to call and clinic schedules. We feel a sense of obligation to our employers.
Let me suggest that each of the above mentioned groups will drop us like a hot potato when circumstances dictate.
It’s not always malicious. Someone’s insurance may change or a spouse may get an out-of-town job. Life just happens sometimes.
Less innocence may be at play when employers start giving us more work for the same pay or laying off colleagues who fail to meet the new benchmarks. We ignore their betrayals because we convince ourselves our allegiance will be rewarded in the long run.
That may be true. I wouldn’t bank on it.
Many physicians are loyal to the job then end up bitter and angry when it’s not reciprocated. At work, I recommend setting a standard of fairness and honesty rather than loyalty. That’s usually in everyone’s best interest.
The people who deserve your greatest loyalty are yourself and your loved ones.
Fatigue/Overwhelm. We are conditioned in the course of medical training to consider some level of exhaustion to be normal. Being a little tired is our baseline level of functioning.
The problem is even when we gain awareness that all the fatigue is abnormal, we are often too tired to do anything about it. The sense of overwhelm from working in our lives makes it difficult to make space to work on them.
Taking care of patients, family and household chores turns life into a series of urgent events. Less pressing activities are put off.
We constantly think about how we wish we had more reserve for other endeavors. Instead, books are left unread or unwritten; workouts are left undone; offices are left unorganized; alternative job opportunities are left unexplored; and under-satisfied lives continue.
Awareness without action ultimately leads to frustration. That doesn’t serve anyone’s highest good.
Five years after the fact, I have to say that leaving medicine was not what made my life better. However, that move was an unconscious manifestation of my overcoming the cultural barriers to my well-being.
I decided that loyalty to myself is worth as much effort as loyalty to my patients, colleagues and employer. That decision made it easier to commit to creating space in the overwhelm to figure out what I truly want from life.
Retirement was just the start of my long and winding road to well-being. I still had to learn how to draw on both the internal and external resources that are essential to support it. No matter our profession, it’s incumbent on each of us to determine for ourselves what it takes to make every day worth it.
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Dr Jattu Senesie is a board-certified obstetrician-gynecologist, certified success coach, physician satisfaction specialist and speaker. She blogs about issues of self care and well-being in an effort to help her fellow altruistic high achievers find satisfaction in their success as early in their careers as possible.
