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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

    • Primary care crisis requires new training and skills

      Justin Oldfield, MD | Physician
    • Expanding the SOAP framework boosts health outcomes

      Deepak Gupta, MD and Sarwan Kumar, MD | Physician
    • The handwashing standard nobody finished. Until now.

      Bernadette Burroughs, RN | Conditions
    • Primary care access is the real problem, not the system

      Payam Zamani, MD | Physician
    • How corporate medicine is eroding truth and patient dignity

      Ronald L. Lindsay, MD | Physician
    • Why bipolar II is not just a milder version of bipolar I

      Ethan Evans, MD | Conditions
  • Past 6 Months

    • I Googled my own name and a corporate clinic I’ve never worked at appeared [PODCAST]

      The Podcast by KevinMD | Podcast
    • Primary care crisis requires new training and skills

      Justin Oldfield, MD | Physician
    • How corporate health care ruined the medical profession

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

      The Podcast by KevinMD | Podcast
    • 13.1 reasons running a half marathon beats practicing medicine

      John Wei, MD | Physician
    • Medicare practice expense cuts will hurt patients

      John Birkmeyer, MD | Policy
  • Recent Posts

    • Physician retirement is a myth for the ripening doctor

      Farid Sabet-Sharghi, MD | Physician
    • When GLP-1 doesn’t work, look at chronic stress

      Carrie Friedman, NP | Conditions
    • How a diversionary legal strategy harms medical malpractice

      Howard Smith, MD | Physician
    • Medical apology laws don’t reduce malpractice lawsuits

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    • Independent physicians are missing from health care policy

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    • Physicians in venture capital see what others miss

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