New to the resume, Fight Doctor!
-A
The Trip: Where I've Been and Where I'm Going
May 9, 2013
On a plane over some ocean, flying to some country.
The plan:
I’ve been traveling from The Navajo Reservation in Shiprock, New Mexico to eventually reach the Cook Islands in the Pacific Ocean. Along the way I have stopped in Bay City, Texas, New Orleans, and my home in Tallahassee, Florida. I’ve flown out of Jacksonville to my other home in Boston to meet Maryclaire and we’ll go to London. Then we’ll head to Shenzhen, China via Hong Kong to teach Family Medicine.
As a break we’ll take a week in Hong Kong and then to Beijing to see the Great Wall and the Forbidden City, Tienaman Square and the many, many tourist traps sprung on unsuspecting Westerners in Beijing.
Maryclaire will return to Boston and I’ll continue on to Sydney, Australia for a week, bounce off of New Zealand, and then finally land at the island of Rarotonga in the Cook Islands to meet my ship, the Barque Picton Castle, her Captain, and crew for 3 months in the South Pacific as the Medical Officer.
When I’m done I’ll arrive in LA, see some friends in California, and take a train or bus the rest of the way back to Boston. Then we’ll move more permanently to Asheville, North Carolina, my third home.
Around the World in a few days. Planes, Trains, Automobiles, Land, Sea, and Air.
Life is awesome.
(sent to me by the Pat).
Guest Writers On Careers In Family Medicine
Over the next few weeks a few of my colleagues are going to be writing in about their varied personal careers as Family Doctors.
The first two will be from a friend who works as a hospitalist at a large medical center with a good portion of ICU patients, and the other works in a refugee clinic doing integrative medicine including acupuncture, Functional Medicine, and osteopathic manipulation.
If you’re interested, stay posted.
-A
Zahra Safe And Doing Well
Zahra is safe and doing well in Syria. For security reasons she can’t give any specifics but she is working in field hospital and several different refugee camp clinics. She is keeping a journal and will have more when she’s at a safe location to share her stories.
Debt & Reward
Becoming a physician in the United States is an expensive proposition. Nearly everyone has to take out massive student loans. Some people get around this by making commitments to service agencies, the military or small towns for an equal number of years of service for years of medical school paid.
I like the former, borrowed. Extensively.
If you look up average medical school loan debt you’ll get an eyebrow-raising figure. Well take that, and at least double it. At least.
This surprising amount of debt is one of the major things that keeps medical students from selecting Family Medicine as a specialty and pushes them towards more financially rewarding specialties like Dermatology or Radiology.
But students should consider the other aspects of Family Medicine that make it amazing.
Being trained as a Family Doctor in 2013 means that if you graduate from a high-quality program you can take care of adults and children in the clinic or in the hospital. You can deliver babies. You can work in the emergency room. You can work in the ICU. You can inject a knee, ultrasound an abdomen, or console a family as their loved one declines in their health and passes on. And a wide range of skills means you can work in multiple settings, around the world, from a hospital in Boston, the Navajo reservation, or the ruins of a church in Haiti.
And the intimate relationship of seeing patients over weeks or months or years is a reward in itself.
I think the flexibility to do so many things as a newly-minted or seasoned Family Doctor, combined with a short or long-term career as a locum tenens is the ultimate experience in reward and opportunity. While anybody graduating from an orthopedics residency or a cardiology fellowship would also have the chance to avoid being locked down to a contract allowing 2 to 4 weeks of vacation a year from their 6am to 8pm days (not counting call), only a full-scope Family Doctor has the chance to work in so many settings. A Family Doctor can do so many things, never be bored and still earn a living. And they have the chance to set their own schedule when life and the world present the opportunity to do something amazing.
Last night while during call I managed a complex sepsis patient in the ICU, provided conscious sedation for another Family Doctor in the emergency room as they performed a procedure, counseled a recently intubated young man on alcohol abuse, and took care of a teenager with pneumonia.
Today I finally paid off the credit card debt that I’ve carried since shortly after I started college. Something I was never able to consider before. And now I will focus on aggressively paying off the massive amount of student debt that hounds me, and keeps other physicians from being able to manage their own fates.
What a change from only 9 short months ago.
A year ago I was miserable. Now I work 60% less, make 100% more, have been around the world once already, and am nearly completely free of consumer debt. I’ve even funded an emergency account for myself. And I’m still doing critical care and obstetrics unlike many Family Physicians who feel they need to back off of these things to make their lives manageable.Life balance is too important, but it doesn’t have to mean sacrificing challenge or financial reward.
I think any student considering a medical specialty should consider this.
And I think any person who is in a personal rut should consider the things that are important to them and ask if they are moving forward towards those goals. If you are not, consider what the next step is- from planning to quitting- and take it.
Being a Family Doctor is the greatest reward in the world. And tonight I have this small but significant joy of paying off of 16 years of credit card debt to enjoy as well. That right now is as much as I could ask for over 24 hours.
That and some nice scotch with a piece of good dark chocolate.