Doctors, PA's, nurses and medical assistants only exist to help people in their time of need. This is what we signed up for. This is what I signed up for, and I did this knowingly with my eyes wide open. I just didn't anticipate the toll that this would take on me now in my 7th year since graduating from medical school.
I love medicine - the puzzle of it all, the thrill of getting to the right diagnosis, the fact that my skill set can actually help people. But what I'm doing now is no longer medicine. Perhaps it's time to break up with my primary care medicine experiment.
I just spent the entire morning planning my escape from medicine. I don't even know how the ball started rolling, but I found myself lost in the math trying to figure exactly how little I needed to live on. I've long known the 4% rule - if you can live off of 4% of your total investments, you could presumably retire. Are you good on $40,000/year? Your number = $1,000,000. What could I cut back on to get to my personal number?
How will I restock my joy fund? I'm going to start by finding joy and gratitude daily. And because I'm a sucker for goal oriented achievements - this is how I'm going to do it → 30 Day Challenge: Restocking My Joy Fund In an effort of accountability, I'm going document my journey on Instagram - come join me HERE.
It all seemed simple back in medical school. X + Y = Z. All the possible answers were available in multiple choice: A, B, C, D or E. But I wasn't warned of these times - the space between the question set up and the answer.
The last week has been a little surreal. My KevinMD post: Should we encourage people to go into medicine went viral in a way I hadn't anticipated with more than 2000 shares! It's been a roller coaster of conflicting emotions: Happiness that my writing resonated with so many people Horror that someone called me a "thought leader" for the millennial generation Guilt for making people in med school/residency aware of their regret for going into medicine
After focusing solely on my medical career for so long, I have forgotten that I am more than just a doctor. My time for hobbies, family and friends had been stripped from me for so long I started to only identify myself by one thing: Doctor. If I stop doctoring, then what good am I?
"You're all F****** idiots!!! I'm going to report Dr. M to the state board and get her medical license revoked! You're just after our money, trying to make us come back to get re-examined again! You've just lost four patients, you F****** M************!!! ... To repeat this message, press 7." I sighed, handing the phone back to my medical assistant. "Well... I guess just try to document that in a phone encounter and censor it a bit. We still need it for the patient's chart. Also, don't delete the message." It's time to face the music. This is my new normal.
For the last week and a half, I've been lost. After experiencing compassion fatigue and realizing I wasn't even close to pulling myself out of burnout, I've been racking my brain trying to rethink my situation yet again.
When I went into primary care, I had dreams of being able to prevent disease. I had dreams of doing my part to help this broken, expensive healthcare system - chronic diseases directly attributable to obesity make up 80% of healthcare spending in the US. If I could just catch deadly habits before they caused harm and set people on a better course, I could do so much good, I told myself. What I didn't take into account was for this to work, the people I took care of would need to also buy into this dream.