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Top 10 ways to know it’s time to quit your job as a doctor

Pamela Wible, MD
Physician
August 21, 2014
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Attention all doctors: The first three are mine. The rest are from miserable colleagues. All true. And common. If you’re a doctor and you recognize anything on this list, please quit your job.

10. You feel nauseated when you see your clinic logo; you alter your commute to avoid streets with your clinic’s billboard.

9. Discouraged by the general despair among staff, you try to be joyful. Then you’re reprimanded by the clinic manager for being “excessively happy.”

8. You dream of leaving medicine to work as a waitress.

7. You envy your sickest patients and/or you develop a perverse pleasure in your patients’ pain.

6. You pray you will be diagnosed with cancer so you can get some time to sleep.

5. You spend your nights trying to keep patients alive while you imagine ways to die by suicide.

4. You work 16 to 24-hour shifts and have not had sex with your spouse in months.

3. You’re a top-rated doctor, yet you daydream about walking into traffic, jumping through the window, or just dying in the course of a normal day.

2. You are counting down the days until retirement during patient appointments.

1. You change your computer password to “f*ck [name of hospital where you work]!!!”

If you’re a doctor, join the physician teleseminar and learn how you can stop suffering and start practicing real medicine.

Pamela Wible pioneered the community-designed ideal medical clinic and blogs at Ideal Medical Care. She is the author of Pet Goats and Pap Smears. Watch her TEDx talk, How to Get Naked with Your Doctor. 

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  • Most Popular

  • Past Week

    • Rethinking the role of family physicians vs. specialists

      Ronald L. Lindsay, MD | Physician
    • A humorous parody of medical specialties and the modern patient

      Sidney J. Winawer, MD | Physician
    • Pharmacy closures threaten our entire public health system

      Timothy Lesaca, MD | Physician
    • Clinicians are failing at value-based care because no one taught them the system [PODCAST]

      The Podcast by KevinMD | Podcast
    • Oral Wegovy sounds easy, but the reality is more complicated [PODCAST]

      The Podcast by KevinMD | Podcast
    • Surviving a hospital blizzard as a physician on call

      George F. Smith, MD | Physician
  • Past 6 Months

    • The controversy over Maintenance of Certification for grandfathered physicians

      Bernard Leo Remakus, MD | Physician
    • Why clinicians fail at writing expert reports

      Tracy Liberatore, Esq, PA | Conditions
    • Rethinking the role of family physicians vs. specialists

      Ronald L. Lindsay, MD | Physician
    • How hindsight bias distorts clinical medicine

      Olumuyiwa Bamgbade, MD | Physician
    • The cost of time constraints in primary care: Why doctors feel rushed

      Ann Lebeck, MD | Physician
    • Why we need a new medical specialty to fix corporate medicine

      Allan Dobzyniak, MD | Physician
  • Recent Posts

    • Evaluating the credibility of major medical journals today

      Laurel A. Coons, PhD | Policy
    • The shift from physician clinical intelligence to AI infrastructure

      Mark Goldfarb, MD | Tech
    • How rural health care access impacts maternal mortality

      Alyssa Sterner | Policy
    • Trusting clinical intuition to spot an atypical heart attack

      Anonymous | Physician
    • How to build a bedtime routine for a consistent sleep schedule

      Lindsay Anderson | Conditions
    • How artificial intelligence scales physician extension

      Tod Stillson, MD | Tech

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Top 10 ways to know it’s time to quit your job as a doctor
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