“Sometimes it seems like people are getting into medicine to get out of medicine. It is even strange, like the degree is something they have but don’t want to use.”
Wednesday morning, I received notification that someone had commented on one of my YouTube videos. I read the comment above and laughed out loud. No denials here!
Yes, through the lens of social media’s algorithm, it appears that medicine has no physicians left to keep emergency departments open. Further, for years now, surveys have indicated that more and more physicians intend n to exit clinical medicine for non-clinical positions. But when I think about my medical school class and remember the hundreds of physicians I met throughout residency, all of them are still practicing medicine. Most want to keep practicing medicine. A lot seem reasonably happy with their life.
So, in reality, I don’t know if physicians are leaving in droves. That’s not what I see.
But the YouTube commenter nailed something else: we all go into things, then leave, and often don’t use our experience.
In a sense, whatever we go into we’re bound to leave. Such is life. Everyone says goodbye to everything. It’s about the use of our experience.
To go through something, then leave as an integrated self—which I believe is the whole point—we must learn to appreciate the good and bad of everything. We cannot paint black and white memories. We must discard dogma aggressively. If we hope to learn, grow, forgive, and be whole.
To neglect our past experience’s wisdom would be a shame, just as ignorant as it would be for me to live a life after medicine without remembering I’m a physician, an understanding I don’t plan to leave behind; because that’s where I learned who I was.
To livin’ a life we love,
Ryan Fightmaster, MD
(Today, the audiobook version of my first book dropped on Audible. If you want to be the first to purchase it (or even listen), I’d like to hope that opportunity won’t last beyond this morning! As always, thanks for consistent support. Every click and read has mattered.)