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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

    • Why patient trust in physicians is declining

      Mansi Kotwal, MD, MPH | Physician
    • Why insurance must cover home blood pressure monitors

      Soneesh Kothagundla | Conditions
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      Megan Milne, PharmD | Meds
    • 5 things health care must stop doing to improve physician well-being

      Christie Mulholland, MD | Physician
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      The Podcast by KevinMD | Podcast
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      Jordan Liz, PhD | Tech
  • Past 6 Months

    • The blind men and the elephant: a parable for modern pain management

      Richard A. Lawhern, PhD | Conditions
    • Why patient trust in physicians is declining

      Mansi Kotwal, MD, MPH | Physician
    • Is primary care becoming a triage station?

      J. Leonard Lichtenfeld, MD | Physician
    • Psychiatrists are physicians: a key distinction

      Farid Sabet-Sharghi, MD | Physician
    • Why feeling unlike yourself is a sign of physician emotional overload

      Stephanie Wellington, MD | Physician
    • The U.S. gastroenterologist shortage explained

      Brian Hudes, MD | Physician
  • Recent Posts

    • Emotional awareness and expression therapy explained

      David Clarke, MD | Conditions
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      David Rosenthal | Conditions
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    • The anticoagulant evidence controversy: a whistleblower’s perspective

      David K. Cundiff, MD | Meds
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      Christie Mulholland, MD | Physician
    • Is tramadol really ineffective and risky?

      John A. Bumpus, PhD | Meds

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