No, said Aziraphale, it's ineffable.

studiousmedic quilavastudy

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6.3.19 The stress would usually be on right now but I feel unnervingly calm… it’s a rainy week in Bristol and I’m sitting in nero catching up a missed lecture. I went to my friends play last night at the loco klub and it was so good! Really proud of her. My mum is visiting on Sunday and honestly its getting me through the week. Xxx Emily

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studiousmedic quilavastudy

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Sometimes you just can’t beat English countryside ~

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clumsy-medic

Can across this post on a semi-famous medical insta account owned by a med school senior. I have admired her for her dedication. She is always dressed up, make-up and everything when she goes to work, posts motivation stuff about not giving up and studying etc. I did really respect her until this.

I’m sorry, what on earth??

First of all, you don’t feel sorry for those who are missing a joyous occasion? Why, cause people can only date to want to be with the it loved ones when they are dead or dying? What about your mum’s birthday, your child’s first day in school, your niece’s and nephew’s being born?? It’s not a crime to want to have a life outside of medicine. It’s also not a crime to be sad about missing things that you would enjoy.

Secondly, yes, unfortunately the truth of the matter is, most people who are “successful” have had to sacrifice everything else in life for that “success”. But that should not be the model we subscribe to or aspire to reach. We should be aiming to change the culture of all-consuming careers that leave are burnt out and hollow.

I’m sorry but I do not believe has just because we chose a career that’s demanding that we are not allowed to complain about it among ourselves. No system is perfect and our system of being over-worked and underplayed is definitely not a model we should accept and suffer in silence.

/end rant

dxmedstudent

Don’t accept crap working conditions, and don’t accept lack of basic respect at work for an integral part of medicine; don’t normalise the kind of conditions that lead to burnout and attrition of your workforce. You have a right to expect a reasonable rota and adequate staffing. You have a right to expect a good chance of being able to swap around shifts to ensure that you get to go to important events. Yes, this won’t always be possible in reality, but there is really no reason why things like this can’t be accommodated with a little bit of teamwork and basic respect.

It’s perfectly OK to not care about missing life events. Maybe it really doesn’t bother you, maybe you don’t really like life events or sharing time with the people in your life anyway. Maybe your love of your work makes up for it. Maybe you hope that pretending that you’re OK with it all gives you brownie points at work. I don’t know the experience level of the person who posted the original comments, so it’s hard to tell just how long they’ve actually had to be dealing with this reality for. Maybe it just doesn’t bother them - more power to them if they really don’t care. I guess if you have little to lose, then perhaps medicine will take less from you.

But what is not OK is shaming peers for how they feel about missing out on life stuff. Because life stuff is important, and does matter to a lot of people. Missing important events sucks. And yes, missing happy events still sucks. Most people want to go to their best friends’ weddings or their own wedding etc. And whilst it may be hard to get every swap done, if you’re routinely finding that you have to miss every event, your system is not working well, and it is not supporting you as the employee working in it. That is not an integral part of medicine; it’s a sign of a system that doesn’t value its employees.

I frequently joke to family and friends that ‘someone has to be in hospital in the middle of the night’ when I make my apologies for not being around, but that doesn’t mean that accommodations can’t be made so people can swap around. Ideally the system should allow flexibility; as long as the shifts are covered and people swap fairly, it should be possible to accommodate people’s lives as much as possible.

And whilst missing stuff is bearable in med school and when you start working, it can start to get pretty old the further along you go, and the more and more things you miss out on along the way. I’m not even all that senior, and I can tell you it’s tiring. Meanwhile, you watch your non-medic friends live their normal, happy 9-5 lives, with all their evenings and weekends free, and plenty of time to pursue interests or accommodate life events. No, living at work absolutely isn’t a hallmark of every career, though it certainly isn’t unique to medicine. But also, realistically, the other careers that also require people to work silly hours or have a poor work-life balance also often suffer from workforce retention issues. Burnout is a real thing.

No, I won’t be grateful, not when it comes to this. Thanks, but no thanks. I earned this job, and I earned that degree with hard work, and I maintain that job by continuing to work hard both in and out of work whilst most people enjoy their free time and work regular hours. I might be lucky to be in medicine, but by no means is it a prize handed out to lucky people. It’s a constantly demanding black hole of effort that I stick with because it rewards me. But I want to make no secret that it’s by no means an easy arrangement. Medicine may be fun and rewarding at times, but it’s never going to be an easy option.

And with all due respect, “but lots of people wish they were where you are” is a sentiment with its heart in the right place, but its head up its own rectum. Yes, lots of people try to get into medicine, with varying levels of knowledge of what they are getting into. The ones who never make it? Some might have enjoyed it some might have hated it. Not all of them would have been good or enjoyed it. I know lots of people who didn’t get in, and whilst I think many of them would have been good doctors, I don’t believe in idealising those who got in, or those who didn’t. The fact that someone else wants to be here should not be used to silence the issues people actually in medicine have with it. Our rates of mental health issues, burnout and suicide are higher than most professions, I think it’s about time we address that, rather than telling people to suck it up.

I think it’s fair enough to say that we should apreciate the opportunities we’ve been given, and be aware of the fact that lots of people would have loved ot have the same opportunity. But that doesn’t mean you’re not ever allowed to complain about your life, because someone who might not even have liked it if they had actually got it, also wanted it.

But implying that people should be grateful for a horrible work life balance, because someone else would kill to live your horrible rota? Is kind of messed up. Sweetheart, life doesn’t have to be horrible. Rotas don’t have to be as awful as they usually are; . People can work together to swap. Medicine doesn’t have to be awful.

Expect better, make it better.

videtur-existentiae

Also seconding the fact that being in medicine doesn’t mean that I should compromise my life, as if I’m a different human being from anyone else. I’m not a god.

Don’t let the institution run by old school (dominantly male) overachievers take over your brain. Times are different, and so should our expectations.

dxmedstudent

The institution run by old school dominantly male overachievers who have historically had a wife at home to take care of their entire lives so they could have all the trappings of an adult life (nice clean home, kids, cooked food etc) because someone else was working super hard to make up for the fact they were never there.

Living at work affects your life. And for much of history, other people shored up those overachievers so they could live that way, to varying degrees of success.