My Last Day As A Surgeon

[ridethecliche]

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I wonder why Atul Gawande bothered to write a book called Being Mortal with the subtitle Medicine and What Matters in the End.

I have that sitting on my bookshelf waiting to be read. I just read girl interrupted (haven't ever seen the movie) and found it quite enjoyable, albeit quick.

 

[NuclearWhammy]

A thread with a title like this is never happy 🙁
I always imagined what would happen if this happened to me ever. All the years of school and hard work going to waste. Yet I would do it over and over a thousand times.

 

[scoops619]

I have that sitting on my bookshelf waiting to be read. I just read girl interrupted (haven't ever seen the movie) and found it quite enjoyable, albeit quick.

I can't recommend Being Mortal enough--easily one of the more poignant and personally moving pieces of writing I've had the chance to read.

 

[Perrotfish]

Yeah that was kind of my whole point.

You're a great example of it - miserable and dissatisfied every step of the way, complaining endlessly about each part of the process, only finding marginal satisfaction now that you're in a lower hours/work attending setting.

I'd counsel those who feel similarly (the ones I quoted) to avoid the whole thing, as they fundamentally don't get it.

When did I say that I am marginally satisfied with my attending job? I'm well paid, well respected, enjoy my work (in limited quantities), I like my patients and my practice, and most of all I am in a position to give my full and almost undivided attention to all the things that I care most about in life. I am extremely satisfied. The journey was awful, the destination is quite nice.

Honestly I've found that the most dissatisfied physicians want this profession to provide them with not just a good job, but with deep personal satisfaction. Some people find that in medicine, and that's great. Some people use medicine as a a vehicle tofinding satisfaction in their lives, and I think that's great too. Some people, though seem to be chasing professional satisfaction for decades without finding it. They spend years pursuing long residencies, fellowships, and then climbing the academic ladder because to stop at any point would be to admit that they're not going to find satisfaction in their jobs, that they need to find it in their lives instead. That's tragic, doubly so because they could almost certainly find satisfaction in their lives if they stopped dumping all of their waking hours into medicine. Medicine is a blessing, but you can make it a curse if you ask more of it than it can give.

Maybe you are one of the rare ones, who is truly happiest in the OR. At some point, though, I hope you take a step back and try to objectively consider how happy the OR really makes you. You don't need a fellowship, or a position at an academic hospital, or a 100 hour/week junior attending job. Its OK to just start working 50 hours/week for a large private hospital with an easy call schedule. Its alright for a job to be a means, rather than an ends.

Failing that I hope you stop counseling premeds. Every time another person like you joins the profession it gets that much harder for the rest of us to negotiate:

Hospital: "Is there a starting salary you're looking for?
DrYou: "I just want to be here. I feel like people who want a salary fundamentally don't get it"

 

[ridethecliche]

I think that @Perrotfish and @SouthernSurgeon are talking past each other here a bit.

It's wholly possible to be fulfilled with your life's work, but to also find satisfaction elsewhere. I think @Perrotfish's point about people getting burned out because they want to be fully fulfilled by medicine is an important one. It's like the person that is never quite happy in a relationship because they're looking for someone else to complete them.

 

[Cyberdyne 101]

I think that @Perrotfish and @SouthernSurgeon are talking past each other here a bit.

I agree. It seems as if they're both jumping to conclusions about one another.

 

[WGSgrad]

Perhaps I ought be ashamed, but initially, I was surprised at the eloquence of his writing (as a physician)...and then I read his wife's op-ed, and found out that he had a master's degree in literature. While the existence of the later should not preclude the shame I felt as a result of the earlier assumption, I think it does explain a bit.

Thank you for sharing this book.

 

[Lucca]

Book came today and I read half of it in one sitting just now. What a great writer he was. Every bit of its written with a lot of verve and compassion but plainly and to the point, clearly with a sense of urgency to tell his story. Can't help but be moved by it and there is a lot to learn from him even.

 

[Brorthopedic]

"Most ambitions are either achieved or abandoned; either way, they belong to the past"

That's powerful man.

 

[Nietzschelover]

https://www.yahoo.com/katiecouric/when-breath-becomes-aira-young-father-and-133132815.html

 

[MediCane2006]

This is my favorite paragraph from all of his articles -- it's referring to what message he would hope to send to his infant daughter:

"That message is simple: When you come to one of the many moments in life when you must give an account of yourself, provide a ledger of what you have been, and done, and meant to the world, do not, I pray, discount that you filled a dying man’s days with a sated joy, a joy unknown to me in all my prior years, a joy that does not hunger for more and more, but rests, satisfied. In this time, right now, that is an enormous thing."

I cry every time I read this. He had a beautiful way with words. 🙁

 

[Nietzschelover]

Just finished. Tragic and inspiring. And his wife writes as beautifully as he did.

 

[fancymylotus]

**** cancer, seriously.

 

[FutureD.O]

A new book to read! Here we go feels.