Wendy Schofer is a pediatrician and a retired captain in the U.S. Navy.
For years, I didn’t realize the name for what I was experiencing as a primary care pediatrician was burnout. I just thought I wasn’t enough—not good enough, not hardworking enough, not experienced enough. That self-doubt didn’t stay confined to my role as a doctor; it crept into how I felt as a parent, a spouse, a community member.
Nothing ever felt like enough. So I did what I was trained to …
I walked into my local improvisational comedy theater a few years ago and started taking classes to escape burnout and have some fun. It was so freaking difficult. Here I was, a frazzled, tightly-wound mid-career pediatrician, surrounded by all these creative, quirky folks from all walks of life who were just so funny. I kept hearing, “We don’t want to hear you on stage, Wendy,” meaning they wanted me to …
As Physicians Week and Doctors’ Day approach, I’m getting ready for the flurry of posts and memes that get shared on social media about the appreciation being extended to us. Whether it is from our patients, colleagues, or administration, the common theme seems to be: the pizza delivery to the breakroom (getting cold while I run around hair-on-fire seeing all the patients) and the CEO emailing, “Thank You, Providers” is …
My eyes fell upon a horrible newspaper headline from 2008: “Fat kids die earlier.” That is the first article that I remember talking about obesity in childhood, but there were plenty more in the early 2000s. At the time, I clipped it because it reinforced my approach at the time: identify issues, educate, act, and avoid.
Over the past two decades, there has been an increase in the prevalence of children …
Have you ever gone on a retreat?
I’m not talking about the Scouts of America kind, and I’m not talking about the one day the residents took off training to do team-building exercises and trust walks. Nope, family vacations do not count, as we all know that we need a vacation from our vacation when we get home.
Have you ever just gone away, disconnected from everything else, and connected to yourself?
Does …
As a pediatrician, you’d think that I’d be a pro at celebrating growth. After all, I celebrate the growth of children in the office as they meet their developmental milestones and grow physically. I celebrate their academic and social growth.
What I hadn’t celebrated: my own growth. I thought for years that I was beyond that. Even my own professional growth had become tedious: Check the boxes on CME …
I just received my peer evaluation from work. And I’m gonna admit: I was nervous.
“Yikes.” I cringed when I saw it in my inbox. Would my colleagues call me out for not being as sharp, fast, or adept as them? Would they fault me because I just cannot stomach a dislocation despite working in a pediatric urgent care for several years? (True story: I damn near dropped out while treating …
There’s a lot of hubbub about The Great Resignation right now.
Millions of Americans are quitting their jobs each month. It’s happening in medicine and other sectors such as education, tech, and fast food. Interestingly, it’s not the typical younger employees driving the massive numbers; it’s mid-career workers.
In our household, we have seen both sides of the resignation. At the same time that my teen son quit his first job at …
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