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Pediatrician Sarah Webber discusses her article, “Why it’s so hard to admit when we don’t like our jobs.” The conversation is a vulnerable look into her personal experience with burnout just nine months into what she thought was her dream job as a pediatric hospitalist. Sarah shares her journey of feeling drained and unhappy, and her initial attempts to “fix” things with more mindfulness, gratitude, and journaling, only to find the dread remained. She explores the profound identity crisis she faced, where her self-worth was completely woven into her professional identity, making the thought of not wanting to be a doctor feel selfish and wrong. The episode centers on an emotional breakthrough that led to the freedom of honesty, the courage to leave her role, and the powerful realization that by letting go, she not only opened a door for someone else but also for herself to see the many different ways one can be a healer in the world.

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Transcript

Kevin Pho: Hi and welcome to the show. Subscribe at KevinMD.com/podcast. Today we welcome Sarah Webber. She’s a pediatrician, and today’s KevinMD article is “Why it’s so hard to admit when we don’t like our jobs.” Sarah, welcome to the show.

Sarah Webber: Thanks for having me.

Kevin Pho: All right, so just briefly share your story and journey and talk about why you wrote this KevinMD article.

Sarah Webber: Sure. I am still practicing. I practice in pediatric sedation. I’m in academic medicine. But I wrote this story actually about a year ago when I think I was continuing to process some things that had happened really early in my career. I was a very go-getter trainee. I loved training. I was probably in the gunner category, but as I went into my faculty role, had a couple of children, I became really burned out.

But one of the things that was really important about writing this article from a personal standpoint was unpacking a lot of the emotions that I experienced around being burned out. And then later, even once I was no longer burned out, around wanting a different job and the kind of shame and grief and whatnot that came from that process. And so writing it was both therapeutic, I think, from a personal standpoint, but also in sharing it, facing some of that shame that comes up when we say, “Do I even like being a doctor?” A part of my mission since then has been in the clinician well-being space, and so I felt like writing this article was also a way to give other people permission to ask those hard questions.

Kevin Pho: All right, so tell us about what the article’s about for those who didn’t get a chance to read it.

Sarah Webber: I talk about how I first recognized that I was burned out. I was practicing pediatric hospital medicine and sedation at an academic institution and went through a kind of recovery process. I did a lot of things, dialed some things down, added some things in to really feel like I was no longer burned out, and yet every time I was on service a couple of days in, I just felt this kind of crushing exhaustion. This overstimulation and I kept trying to find fixes.

Maybe if I meditated enough or if I had the right mindset, or if I had a niche within the practice that I liked, maybe I could fix how I was feeling. And the article really focuses on this moment where I was able to slow down and just admit that I didn’t like the job, and then all the grief and shame around: What does that mean for me? And so that’s kind of what the article’s about.

Kevin Pho: So what parts about that job specifically didn’t you like?

Sarah Webber: It took me years, I think, to really identify what the issues were. For me personally, I am very attuned to people around me. I’m kind of in that empath category, and as an academic hospitalist, you have three students, three residents, and then you have your patients and their families. So I think part of it was just the number of people I was trying to support and be attuned to, along with all the pages, you know, the call schedule, all of that, I think cumulatively didn’t align with how I’m wired. And I didn’t realize how much I actually need quiet, alone time, which is not a part of that job.

Kevin Pho: Talk to us about some of the emotions that you had to unpack that made you realize that maybe you were burned out and maybe that job wasn’t particularly right for you.

Sarah Webber: The burnout experience was really not being myself: being short with people, short with families, feeling resentful. And that I actually learned by watching a webinar about burnout. And I was like, “Oh, that’s me on the slide.” The experience of changing my job, I think, was admitting to myself I didn’t even know if I liked being a doctor. I still practice medicine, so I’ve been able to explore that question. But I think for many years I was unwilling to even look at it because of the shame and guilt of that question. But when I was finally able to look at it, it opened up the possibility to say, “OK, then what?”

Kevin Pho: So what did you do next? Once you came to those difficult questions that you had to address, what steps did you take next to unpack that?

Sarah Webber: I think I was able to come to terms with the fact that, OK, at least this version of medicine is not working for me. And I was lucky that I was practicing two types of medicine and I also had academic work, so I was able to resign from one of my positions, which always goes much better than you think it will, or maybe not always, but it went much better than I thought.

And then I leaned more into my research and academic work, and I really let that be the centerpiece for a few years. I think that once I was able to get back into a place of some equanimity with my energy and whatnot, then I was able to say, “OK, now what do I really love?”

And so I pursued some coaching. As a person, I got some coaching and some mentoring, and I think that opened things up. Now I see that I love a lot of things outside of medicine too, and that actually helps medicine be more enjoyable.

Kevin Pho: So I would really want to emphasize that because a lot of physicians, as you said, almost half their lives are defined by medical training. And when they go and become an attending and realize the job isn’t for them, that leads to a lot of the feelings that you discussed: the shame and whatnot. And you realize that there’s another world outside of medicine. And sometimes, engaging in some of those activities actually makes you a better doctor within medicine.

Sarah Webber: Absolutely. And it fills some of those needs. I think burnout can also be because you’re not doing the right things. And so I think it can sometimes fill up that part too. And medicine can have so many paths. It’s just not a binary path or a unilateral path.

Kevin Pho: One of the things that you wrote on the site is that maybe it was me that was wrong. And I think that really puts into words what a lot of doctors feel. They blame themselves and say, “Hey, there’s something wrong with me,” rather than saying, “Hey, the job just isn’t the right fit for me.”

Sarah Webber: There’s something about the way we internalize our professional identity. I think that for many of us, we don’t start with, “The job isn’t right for me.” We start with, “Something’s wrong with me.” And that’s a really stuck place to be.

Kevin Pho: You talk about the impact of coaching and of mentorship in order for you to maybe see that there are multiple paths in medicine. So talk about how that changed you.

Sarah Webber: One of the important things about coaching is that it helps you see the beliefs that you have. And so, one of my beliefs was that the only way I can be good in the world is through medicine. That’s a value of mine: to show up, to do things for other people. So once I was able to look at all the ways we can do and be good in the world, it felt like I wasn’t stuck, but instead had options and opportunities. And then I could think about what I like, what the environments that I like are, and how I can grow into those spaces. And that just is a place of possibility, which is way better than a place of stuckness.

Kevin Pho: Now, what kind of advice can you share with other physicians whose entire worth and self-perceived value is tied up with how they are as a doctor? So how can physicians get unstuck and change that framework?

Sarah Webber: I mean, the first is just the acknowledgment that it’s not your fault. This was ingrained in you. And I think my advice would be if that’s not working for you, that does not have to be your story.

It is difficult work to untangle that. It’s not a simple thing, and so if it feels impossible or confusing, that’s also normal. I think working with a coach, a therapist, or other people going through it—you know, there are group retreats, things like that—but creating spaces where you can examine that story, kind of question it, and then also imagine, if I didn’t believe this, what else might I be able to do in the world that I would also care about and find meaningful and even joyful?

Kevin Pho: So tell us about what your professional life is like now.

Sarah Webber: I still work in academic medicine. I work a couple of days a week in a pediatric sedation clinic. I’m the director of well-being for my department, so I think about things like this all the time. And then I also am a physician coach, and then I write. So I found that writing is just a great way to understand my own sense of self in the world, but also to share my ideas about medicine, about well-being, about these journeys of how we get to a place where we can feel fulfilled and not stuck.

Kevin Pho: Now, of course, on my podcast, on my site, I talk to a lot of physicians where they blend multiple activities together like yourself. You still have the clinical medicine, the academic medicine, but you do things outside of that. You’re a coach as well. And in our world, we meet a lot of physicians who do the same thing, but I realized that we’re a relative minority of physicians.

A lot of physicians still have that traditional mindset of what a physician should be: that they only see patients or their only worth is their clinical value. So when you made this life for yourself, what was the reaction of some of your colleagues, and how did they see you after you made this transition and made this life for yourself?

Sarah Webber: What a good question. I can tell you my inner sense was worry about what people would think. The reality, I think, has been that people find it interesting. And I’ve noticed even some people who say, “That makes me think about the options that I have.”

I’m sure some people don’t understand it, but I think it is becoming slowly more common, especially with the way medicine is right now, for people to start to see that I kind of get to choose. I get to choose the life that I try to build. So for the most part, I think people have been positive about it.

The one thing I will say is I feel now like my medicine colleagues are not my only community, which is OK with me. But that is a shift that happens when you do this.

Kevin Pho: Now, what kind of advice do you have for physicians who may be listening to you now, and maybe you sparked a little interest on their end and made them realize that medicine is not the end-all and be-all? How can they get started creating a life for themselves that’s not totally defined by what they do in the clinic or in the hospital?

Sarah Webber: Something I’ve learned in my own life and with people that I coach is that it can be really hard to be creative and imagine something different when you’re exhausted. And so if you’re in that exhausted place, my initial advice is to find places to rest, to slow down, go on a walk, no devices, no podcasts, even just places to be a person. Because I think you have to start that slowing down to even hear your own inner self. So I would start there.

If you can find a coach, a therapist, or a mentor, someone who can help you unpack things, I think your process is going to be more efficient. And then I would reflect on what you loved to do before medicine and find a little time to do that thing and just see what happens.

Kevin Pho: You mentioned earlier you’re also the director of well-being at the organization that you work with, so how do you advise other clinicians within the constructs of a more rigid structure like most medical organizations are? So what kind of advice can you share with them under the regulations of the organization that you work within?

Sarah Webber: So I try to embed it in a lot of different ways. I’ll host workshops that are a part of, for example, a standing meeting that encourages and supports people in figuring out what they value. I find physicians love those types of workshops because it invites that space to slow down to think, “What do I really care about?” So I think embedding these reflective practices in our work when we can, both as an individual but as a team, too, is really important to teamwork.

And then I do support people. I’ve done some work in the department where we’ve supported a blanket approach of, on the days you’re not in clinic, block two hours a month to do the work that matters most. So again, trying to encourage these processes of slowing down, doing one thing, reflecting—I think we all have some time for that.

It requires sometimes some other things, some boundaries, some maybe efficiency practices. But those are the ways I try to embed it in the organizational work.

Kevin Pho: We’re talking to Sarah Webber. She’s a pediatrician. Today’s KevinMD article is “Why it’s so hard to admit when we don’t like our jobs.” Sarah, let’s end with some take-home messages that you would like to leave with the KevinMD audience.

Sarah Webber: All right. I think the first thing is actually what I didn’t mention: to use writing as a tool for self-reflection. Whether you call it journaling, narrative medicine, or a story, I think the process of writing, even if you never share it, is a way to check in with where you’re at and what you want.

For people who feel really stuck in their work, I would just encourage them to consider that there are options. And there are so many resources out there now, even more than when I was in my position. And I think there’s growing destigmatization of the experience of physicians who want their career to be different.

Kevin Pho: Sarah, thank you so much for sharing your story, time, and perspective, and thanks again for coming on the show.

Sarah Webber: Thank you very much.