I thought I would get over my need for brainless entertainment once I quit my mentally taxing job. Not so much, it turns out. I still love my celebrity gossip magazines (I do restrict my reading of these to the elliptical machine at the gym, so at least I’m benefiting my body if not my soul). I still love my TV shows, and I love to watch them alone, without my husband, for a little me-time. We do watch a few things together (travel shows, Buffy, even Downton Abbey!), but he really has no interest in some of my shows, and I have none in his. He watches a lot of political analysis programs, which usually serve only to make me mad and indignant. Also, he’s a big geek (and I mean that in the best possible, most loving way). I’m just not interested in the Star Trek-this-and-that, or in the Ancient Aliens. He shakes his head when I put on the E! channel. To each his own. In residency, I used to tell myself I needed to “rest my brain” with The Girls Next Door when I got home from cogitating all day. Now, with that excuse defunct, I will just have to admit that I love me some brainless entertainment. Judge away!
Monday, March 26, 2012
Monday, March 19, 2012
Why Doctors Suck
Full disclosure: I am a doctor. Having said that, sometimes doctors suck.
I have always been reluctant to identify with the title "Doctor." Perhaps that has a lot to do with the fact that somewhere, deep down, I knew I was on the wrong path and this was not my calling. It could also be low self-esteem, but that's a can of worms for another time... I think it also has a lot to do with the fact that, frankly, sometimes doctors suck. Not for nothing do you hear nurses complaining about doctors, patients complaining about doctors, pretty much anyone who ever interacts with doctors complaining about them. Why all the vitriol?
Why Do Doctors Suck? For one, we’re rude. Arrogant. Perpetually running behind schedule. We interrupt. e are perpetually multi-tasking and therefore don’t do any one thing to its best potential.
We are entitled slobs. That's enough to start with...
Doctors are rude. We interrupt other people because what we have to say is so much more important – we went to medical school, didn't we? We have a quarter-million dollar education to impart, so listen up! Or perhaps it's because our time is at such a premium we have to get it out while we can, before moving on to the other ten thousand things demanding our attention. When you only have fifteen minutes with a patient and they are in danger of spending twenty minutes expounding on their family history of the vapours, you need to intervene a little! It is important to keep the visit focused; however, trying to be efficient can have the side effect of being rude. I have always had an unfortunate tendency to interrupt, and becoming a physician did not improve this personality defect.
We yell at and talk down to lab techs, support staff, anyone "under" us. I personally strove to never do this, but I will admit to the occasional eye-roll over the phone as someone "clueless" attempted to answer my question or address my complaint. When one is being pulled in twenty directions at once, it can make one a little abrupt. Sometimes even a little pissy. We're human beings, even if some doctors do succumb to Over-Inflated Ego Syndrome and identify with deities.
I could tell stories of expletive-laced tirades, of people throwing sharp objects across the operating room, of plain old unprofessional, bad behaviour. What gives us the right to act like spoiled children? Historically, little has been done to address these problems, as doctors held all the power. Thankfully, this paradigm is changing, but change is slow in coming and it's hard to undo personality traits that have run rampant for thirty or forty years, in some cases, without check.
Doctors answer their cell phones in the middle of meetings, lectures, movies. I have never done this, I’d like to point out. My low self esteem at least had the benefit of counteracting the doctor-arrogance to which I might otherwise have succumbed. When possible, at lectures and conferences, I always took my pager/phone out of the room to answer if I was on call, and silenced it if I wasn’t. But I can’t tell you how many lectures I’ve been in, only to hear a phone ring, after we had been asked to silence such devices. Rude enough, I know, but then would come the loud “HELLO?” And, more often than you would believe, an entire conversation would follow because the doctor in question couldn’t be bothered to leave the room so that others could focus on the presentation. (by the way, these were invariably men - coincidence?)
Why this rudeness? I think it becomes part of the training. You are so beaten down that you can’t remember to take other people into account. You are focused on surviving that hour, that night shift, that year of residency, that decade of training. At the same time, you are becoming highly educated, with things to say that people will want to listen to – indeed, will pay you to impart. This breeds an arrogance and contempt for other people’s time that I don’t know is entirely avoidable. Another reason for me to get out!
Speaking of contempt for time, doctors multi-task. Recent research on multi-tasking shows, no surprise, that when we try to do several things at once, we don’t do any one of them to the best of our ability. So your doctor who is trying to write a note on a patient, answer another patient’s question, respond to the nurse asking yet another question, and plan ahead for the surgery coming up - that doctor is not giving any of these tasks the attention it deserves. Blame it on the training. Multi-tasking is necessary when there are literally several things that need to be done NOW and only one person to do it. But it’s not a good thing. Yet another way our medical system is broken.
Offices running behind schedule.... another example of how doctor's time is perceived/treated as more valuable than the patient's. There's a lot to say here, but this is already getting very long... I'll just tell a little story.
My mom was visiting me during residency, and I was giving her a tour of the hospital. I swiped my badge as we approached labor and delivery, and the large doors swung open automatically - I didn't even have to touch the door handle! I thought this was convenience and hygeine - my mother remarked, "ah, so this is where the sense of entitlement starts..." Good food for thought...
My mom was visiting me during residency, and I was giving her a tour of the hospital. I swiped my badge as we approached labor and delivery, and the large doors swung open automatically - I didn't even have to touch the door handle! I thought this was convenience and hygeine - my mother remarked, "ah, so this is where the sense of entitlement starts..." Good food for thought...
Finally, my personal pet peeve: Doctors are slobs. Walk into any physician or surgeon’s lounge at the hospital and there will be trash, half-eaten discarded food items, papers, and various detritus strewn about. Who do we expect to clean this up? Why the housecleaning staff, of course. It galls me every time I see it. Just because we have magical initials after our names, that does not entitle us to not clean up after ourselves. Yes, I appreciate the housecleaning staff vacuuming the floors, dusting, wiping down tables, and generally making the office and lounge a nicer place to be. That’s their job. But that doesn’t mean I expect them to clean up my candy-wrappers or crumbs I’ve left behind, or trash I couldn't be bothered to throw away. Sorry, but it’s not okay. Clean Up After Yourself!!!!! End of rant.
This all begs the question: Is it possible to become a doctor and retain some human decency? Of course it is. But that's not as fun to write about.
Do you have other reasons that doctors suck? Let me know and maybe I'll put them in my book!
Monday, March 12, 2012
A Calling, or just Voices in my Head?
Today is Monday, my blog day. I am trying to keep to a schedule and post a blog entry every Monday. Last week I got off track a bit as I was a) recovering from the flu, and b) meeting my dealer to pick up my Girl Scout Cookies. Priorities!
I have been reading Dan Miller's 48 Days to the Work You Love and my homework for today, day six of my 48 day odyssey, is to discuss my new understanding of the difference between a job, a career, and a vocation. Since today happened to be Blog Day, I thought this would be a good forum! I'll try to keep it interesting.
Basically, a JOB is the thing you do to bring in income. A job could also be a chore that needs to get done - this does not produce income, but has important rewards as well (a clean house, etc). On average, people stay in a job for 3.2 years - that doesn't seem very long at all! It would seem that many people will hold many, many jobs throughout their lifetime. I tend to think of people staying in their jobs for years, if not decades, looking at my parents and their friends as models (turns out I was thinking of careers; see below).
I decided to look at my own employment history. I started by painting fences for my dad - I have no idea how old I was. I distinctly remember painting over the spiders on the fence because I didn't want to touch them, and removing them from the fence would require physical contact. I was perhaps not the most conscientious fence-painter. Clearly, this was just a job and not my vocation. I was also not clever enough to Tom-Sawyer the job and get someone else to do it for me! I moved on up the ranks, from fence-painter to paper-grader to waitress to research assistant to researcher to medical student to resident to practicing physician. No stint longer than four years, and until medical school, none longer than a year and a half. Maybe I'm not so far off the national average, after all!
A CAREER seems to be a little more than just any job. This is a job with staying power. When I think of a career, I think of someone staying in the same job for decades, advancing professionally along the way. However, in our changing work environment, sometimes people have two or more careers over their lifetime. Dan Miller mentions that the word career comes from the Latin for "cart" and the Middle French for "racetrack". The dictionary gives us "to run or move at full speed, rush wildly". No wonder I was tired!
A VOCATION, on the other hand, is a calling. This brings in ideas of destiny and purpose. Prior to my rethinking these issues, I assumed that very few people had a true vocation in life. Most people I knew had jobs and/or careers that paid the bills. They worked to, or beyond, the point of burnout, then retired. It would seem that if one's job is truly one's vocation, work would be so fulfilling that burnout would be rare, and a traditional "retirement" less attractive. If we're just working to get to some magical "retirement day", when we can finally relax, stop careering, and start living, then where's the pleasure in that? I thought for a long time that I didn't necessarily deserve pleasure in my working life, then I started meeting people who truly loved their jobs. I wanted to be like them!
Medicine would seem to be one of the true vocations, wouldn't it? And for many, I believe it is. Helping people is a noble calling. But I think it's also possible to misinterpret the voices in one's head, and label it a calling. I heard the voices that told me I wanted an amazing education in the human body and its workings, as well as the voices that told me helping people would be nice. I knew I didn't want to work in a lab, doing bench research. So that seemed to point to medicine. And I did love the education! Ah, to be a student forever... But once the education turned into a day-to-day experience of sleep deprivation and stress, I became more and more miserable. I must have thought I deserved to be unhappy, because I did nothing to change this for ten years! Now, I am finally reconsidering things, and trying to figure out other jobs or careers that could help fulfill those same goals. I'm having to take the traditional-career blinders off and look all around me for other options.
Dan Miller also points out that your job can be one part of your vocation, but everything you do should be related to fulfilling this calling. Your family life, leisure time, etc. I've been working hard on personal development for a few years now, which led me to this pesky quitting-the-career-that-was-making-me-miserable event in the first place! It's amazing how working on one part of your life will cause shifts in every other part. Now I'm considering my vocation and how to make it happen in a way that will bring me fulfillment and pleasure. I know now that if I'm going to listen to some of the voices, I have to listen to the others - the ones that warned me that ob/gyn is not a good career choice for someone who loves to sleep, for example.
What is your vocation? Are you fulfilling it? Are you happy? These are questions that deserve to be asked and answered. I ignored that last one for years, but it's never too late!
I have been reading Dan Miller's 48 Days to the Work You Love and my homework for today, day six of my 48 day odyssey, is to discuss my new understanding of the difference between a job, a career, and a vocation. Since today happened to be Blog Day, I thought this would be a good forum! I'll try to keep it interesting.
Basically, a JOB is the thing you do to bring in income. A job could also be a chore that needs to get done - this does not produce income, but has important rewards as well (a clean house, etc). On average, people stay in a job for 3.2 years - that doesn't seem very long at all! It would seem that many people will hold many, many jobs throughout their lifetime. I tend to think of people staying in their jobs for years, if not decades, looking at my parents and their friends as models (turns out I was thinking of careers; see below).
I decided to look at my own employment history. I started by painting fences for my dad - I have no idea how old I was. I distinctly remember painting over the spiders on the fence because I didn't want to touch them, and removing them from the fence would require physical contact. I was perhaps not the most conscientious fence-painter. Clearly, this was just a job and not my vocation. I was also not clever enough to Tom-Sawyer the job and get someone else to do it for me! I moved on up the ranks, from fence-painter to paper-grader to waitress to research assistant to researcher to medical student to resident to practicing physician. No stint longer than four years, and until medical school, none longer than a year and a half. Maybe I'm not so far off the national average, after all!
A CAREER seems to be a little more than just any job. This is a job with staying power. When I think of a career, I think of someone staying in the same job for decades, advancing professionally along the way. However, in our changing work environment, sometimes people have two or more careers over their lifetime. Dan Miller mentions that the word career comes from the Latin for "cart" and the Middle French for "racetrack". The dictionary gives us "to run or move at full speed, rush wildly". No wonder I was tired!
A VOCATION, on the other hand, is a calling. This brings in ideas of destiny and purpose. Prior to my rethinking these issues, I assumed that very few people had a true vocation in life. Most people I knew had jobs and/or careers that paid the bills. They worked to, or beyond, the point of burnout, then retired. It would seem that if one's job is truly one's vocation, work would be so fulfilling that burnout would be rare, and a traditional "retirement" less attractive. If we're just working to get to some magical "retirement day", when we can finally relax, stop careering, and start living, then where's the pleasure in that? I thought for a long time that I didn't necessarily deserve pleasure in my working life, then I started meeting people who truly loved their jobs. I wanted to be like them!
Medicine would seem to be one of the true vocations, wouldn't it? And for many, I believe it is. Helping people is a noble calling. But I think it's also possible to misinterpret the voices in one's head, and label it a calling. I heard the voices that told me I wanted an amazing education in the human body and its workings, as well as the voices that told me helping people would be nice. I knew I didn't want to work in a lab, doing bench research. So that seemed to point to medicine. And I did love the education! Ah, to be a student forever... But once the education turned into a day-to-day experience of sleep deprivation and stress, I became more and more miserable. I must have thought I deserved to be unhappy, because I did nothing to change this for ten years! Now, I am finally reconsidering things, and trying to figure out other jobs or careers that could help fulfill those same goals. I'm having to take the traditional-career blinders off and look all around me for other options.
Dan Miller also points out that your job can be one part of your vocation, but everything you do should be related to fulfilling this calling. Your family life, leisure time, etc. I've been working hard on personal development for a few years now, which led me to this pesky quitting-the-career-that-was-making-me-miserable event in the first place! It's amazing how working on one part of your life will cause shifts in every other part. Now I'm considering my vocation and how to make it happen in a way that will bring me fulfillment and pleasure. I know now that if I'm going to listen to some of the voices, I have to listen to the others - the ones that warned me that ob/gyn is not a good career choice for someone who loves to sleep, for example.
What is your vocation? Are you fulfilling it? Are you happy? These are questions that deserve to be asked and answered. I ignored that last one for years, but it's never too late!
Wednesday, March 7, 2012
Drag Lessons
My husband loves Thai food. What does this have to do with my quest for a new life, you ask? Hang in there, I'm going somewhere with this.... So my husband loves Thai food. His birthday was last weekend, and I decided to take him out to a new Thai place for dinner. New to us, anyway - we always go to the same two or three places. I searched online for best/favorite Thai places in our city, and one restaurant came up that I've driven by countless times, so I figured that was a good sign. I perused their online menu and decided that this was where we'd go.
We show up on a Friday evening, and the restaurant has quite a few tables filled, but some open tables in the back room. Our hostess approaches and we ask for a table in the back. That's when I realize (hopefully without doing an obvious double-take) that our hostess is in drag. Nothing over the top, but definitely a man in drag. I am thrilled. As we sit down, I say to my husband, "I have a new favorite restaurant!". He chuckles. Turns out all the waitresses here are in drag! I am so excited by this, I am practically giddy. I don't remember reading anything on the website about this. There is no "show", no singing, no sequins or feathers, just hardworking waitresses who happen to be fabulous. We have our (fantastic) mojitos and enjoy our dinner. I barely resist the urge to take my husband's picture with our waitresses.
After we leave, over a nightcap, he asks me why I was so darned excited that our waitresses were in drag. I didn't know what the answer was until he asked, and then it was so clear. Yes, drag queens are fabulous and fun and sassy and all of that. But there are real people under all that makeup and that's what made me so happy. Here were two souls, so confident in who they are on the inside that they are unafraid to express it on the outside. Every day they must risk persecution, rudeness, loss of business, perhaps even physical violence. Yet they let their true selves shine. I wish I were that brave.
Yes, it took courage to quit my job, my career, with no prospects in sight (bravery or stupidity - one or the other...) But it took me a very long time to work up that courage, and I am now trying to remain brave in the face of unemployment. I am trying to look inside and figure out who I am. Once I have that answer, I hope to shine it out to the world with every ounce of the bravery I witnessed Friday night. I'd settle for one-tenth of the fabulousness.
We show up on a Friday evening, and the restaurant has quite a few tables filled, but some open tables in the back room. Our hostess approaches and we ask for a table in the back. That's when I realize (hopefully without doing an obvious double-take) that our hostess is in drag. Nothing over the top, but definitely a man in drag. I am thrilled. As we sit down, I say to my husband, "I have a new favorite restaurant!". He chuckles. Turns out all the waitresses here are in drag! I am so excited by this, I am practically giddy. I don't remember reading anything on the website about this. There is no "show", no singing, no sequins or feathers, just hardworking waitresses who happen to be fabulous. We have our (fantastic) mojitos and enjoy our dinner. I barely resist the urge to take my husband's picture with our waitresses.
After we leave, over a nightcap, he asks me why I was so darned excited that our waitresses were in drag. I didn't know what the answer was until he asked, and then it was so clear. Yes, drag queens are fabulous and fun and sassy and all of that. But there are real people under all that makeup and that's what made me so happy. Here were two souls, so confident in who they are on the inside that they are unafraid to express it on the outside. Every day they must risk persecution, rudeness, loss of business, perhaps even physical violence. Yet they let their true selves shine. I wish I were that brave.
Yes, it took courage to quit my job, my career, with no prospects in sight (bravery or stupidity - one or the other...) But it took me a very long time to work up that courage, and I am now trying to remain brave in the face of unemployment. I am trying to look inside and figure out who I am. Once I have that answer, I hope to shine it out to the world with every ounce of the bravery I witnessed Friday night. I'd settle for one-tenth of the fabulousness.
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