At the lowest depths of burnout, I was a “disruptive physician.” I got away with a lot. I frequently lashed out in anger with inappropriate comments to nurses and staff. I yelled at my husband and my kids. I was in full “victim” mode and I let everyone know it.
As an OB/GYN, I was available to my patients 24/7/365. This was the way it was in my private practice. I …
Confessions of a disruptive physician
An excerpt from The Birth of Joy: A Female Physician’s Healing Journey through Childhood Trauma, Midlife Burnout, and the Rediscovery of Passion and Purpose.
As an OB/GYN, I had found my calling. I loved delivering babies, performing surgery, and the long-term relationships I built with my patients. But I became irritable, angry, and resentful. My life became my work–at the expense of my family and myself. My work was my …
From OB/GYN to self-compassion: a physician’s tale of transformation
Journaling was never my thing. I would buy a pretty journal with great intentions of writing in it regularly. I would write in it daily for a week or two, then forget for a few days, and then forget about it altogether. When I started writing to process some emotions about my mother and my relationship with her, my journal writing was meant to be a brief and cathartic exercise. …
From reluctant journaling to healing words: How writing unveiled my life’s journey
I’ve had my share of therapy.
My mother was a clinical psychologist, and I grew up around the concepts of consciousness and the unconscious, growth and awareness, and “authenticity” before “authenticity” was even a buzzword. I’m quite certain she did some sort of therapy on me during my childhood. I remember vividly her briefcase with the blocks from the Stanford-Binet IQ test. She prepped me at home, at 4, in advance …
A doctor’s foray into online therapy
Day 1. I spent Thursday, my day off, golfing. Friday, I was scheduled to see patients and do surgery on the non-English-speaking mother of a patient I delivered a long time ago (who I didn’t really remember). She remembered me, though, and brought her mother from an hour away to see me. But as I coughed and felt slightly feverish, I realized that I had not felt well …
Chronicles of my COVID isolation
There’s a phrase we use in golf when you hit one good shot after many bad ones: “That was whipped cream on sh*t.”
I used this phrase the other day in a collaborative of coaches whom I had just met (maybe not the best idea). I spoke specifically about my hospital’s wellness committee activities during the past two years during COVID. As chair of that committee, I felt like I was …
How do we help physicians in the time of COVID?
I complain about my job all the time. The frustrations are endless. For example, EMR changes that seem pointless and create more clicks, instead of fewer, the constant barrage of patient emails in my inbox that start with “I have a question about X result” because results are released immediately to patients before I have seen them, patients that arrive late without having filled out medical history form ahead of …
I loved my job yesterday, but I don’t love it every day
It seems that the midlife “slump,” “crisis,” or “malaise” phenomenon is actually something that has been studied and written about a lot in the last 40+ years. The phrase “midlife crisis” was originally coined in the 1960s, as explains Jonathan Rauch in his 2018 book, The Happiness Curve: Why Life Gets Better After 50. He describes some fascinating research that shows a definite age-related dip (a U-shaped curve) in happiness …
Physicians and the midlife dip
We are more than a month into the shelter-in-place, and there are many thoughts that can come up for physicians. Our frontline workers, who are dealing with limited viral testing, inadequate treatments for ill patients, scarcity of PPE, and fear of the virus infecting us and potentially our family members, are undoubtedly fatigued and drained by what they are going through. Other physicians whose practices have had to shut down …
Wellness during the COVID-19 crisis
I am an experienced OB/GYN, well-versed in obstetrics, infertility, gynecology, surgery and — yes — menopause, or so I thought. So why was I so blindsided by my own menopause transition?
I thought I was going through burnout, with anxiety, anger, mood swings, irritability, and depression. I was at a point in my career as an OB/GYN of 20-plus years that patients flocked to me because of my reputation and expected …
Is it physician burnout or perimenopause?
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