Medicine has a pervasive tendency to complain about the very things we want. Complaining can become a part of our personality: “I’m so tired from work,” “I’m stressed about so many tests!” “I don’t know that I’ll match into the spot I want,” “A family yelled at me,” “I’m missing out on everything in my 20’s!” These generally serve only one goal, at least for me when I was most into being a down-and-out woe-is-me medical student and graduate. That goal is to be viewed somehow as a victim. It starts innocently enough – you want to let other people know just how hard it is. It isn’t just “being smart” and being “a good test taker,” it’s studying when your friends are drinking, and studying like an athlete, every day, rain or shine. You’re studying when your friends get their first jobs, cars they actually bought with real money, and go on vacation. When other people know how hard it is, you feel special (a unique snowflake, anyone?). And sometimes, other people may be more understanding about missing out on nights out, weekend trips and the like.
Unfortunately, the pervasiveness of this attitude progresses to a goal of getting sympathy. Fatigue from call is commented on endlessly, as is the sheer volume of patients we cared for, or that horrible, terrible case we had to deal with!
While I am not innocent of these feelings, and I certainly have tried to get some sympathy every now and again (…like, weekly, not annually – I’m no saint!), it’s important to remember a few things. First, you are not a victim! Medicine was a choice. You can stop going to school anytime (though you may enter a debtor’s prison), or you can finish school and pursue a non-residency path in life in business, pharmacy, health care – anything. These are HARD choices, but they are a choice, and the power to choose is truly powerful. To quote the movie Dangerous Minds: “The people who choose to get on that bus, which are YOU, are the people who are saying, “I will not carry myself down to die. When I go to my grave, my head will be high.” That is a choice. There are no victims in this classroom!” And while there truly are many victims in every inner-city classroom, I would find it hard to imagine a high percentage of medical school victims… So, you are not a victim! Next, read and re-read (then read again) your personal statement. That horrible clinical situation you’ve been complaining about? Probably what you said you wanted to do when you wrote your personal statement.
For example, a long time ago in a HIPAA-compliant hospital far away (as always, names/sex/surgery/dates/specific clinical situation changed so the meaning is the same, but the situation is not identifiable), I got an urgent “help-me” call to a room for a patient undergoing an emergency procedure. The plan was to do it with limited sedation (therefore, anesthesiologists were not there), but that didn’t go well and it was compromising the procedure.
I went in to help and quickly learned that the patient had a host of serious problems that meant I had to do a surprise, rapid-fire awake fiberoptic intubation. It was a lot of work, we had to put a central line in after that and deal with hemodynamic trouble – we were busy and it wasn’t easy, but … I had a blast. The doctor who assigned me to the procedure (the board runner) afterwards came to me to apologize for the case. …why? That’s why I get paid! That’s exactly what I thought was the coolest thing ever as a medical student and exactly why I wanted to do anesthesiology! This is the equivalent of joining the military and complaining about living in barracks and doing marches. Or joining a rock band and complaining about practicing your instrument or recording in a studio. What did you think would happen? Did you go into medicine because you wanted an 8-4 job, margaritas over lunch and Office Space? No. We complain because it’s a pervasive habit. We complain when it’s slow and boring. We complain when it’s busy and sick. We complain when the cases are easy, and we complain when it’s too much work.
Go read your personal statement a fourth time. Read all of them that you’ve ever written. Then think about what makes you happy at your job. Focus on those things (i.e. guiding life choices in clinic, consoling families who suffer, treating acute shock, using procedural skills to help someone, using science and your clinical acumen to cleverly figure out the diagnosis, etc.), and not the things that you always complain about (i.e. administration, health care law, public perception of physicians, your deadlines, whatever).
Those things are important – but put them where they deserve to be on your priority list (below the important stuff, most of the time). Don’t ignore them and don’t pretend it’s all butterflies and rainbows. But, try to break the habit of pervasive complaining, especially when it is about the things you really, actually wanted to do! For most of us, the stressful moments – whichever they are – are what drove us to be doctors, to work-hard, sleep less and to occasionally sacrifice other aspects of our life. Make those sacrifices count, be proud of them, and remember how important they are to you, and to the people you help.