The Doctor Dialogue

3.21.25

Happy Friday!

This is the first installation of a series on work/life balance in medicine.

All Gas, No Brakes

A coughing fit from the dining room breaks through the video wired to my ears. I look up. My mom, like a blacksmith at her anvil, is pounding away at her keyboard reviewing her charts for the patients she saw today and previewing those for tomorrow. She turns away from her computer as her body is racked by a cough brought on by the flu. She then turns back to her computer, sighing, and begins again.

With her back turned, gray curls cascade over her shoulders. I remember back when the dark auburn brown locks began to be replaced with gray ones. This frame of her–back turned, toiling away at her computer– was the position she frequently assumed after dinner throughout my childhood.

I always wondered how she had the strength to come home after a 10-hour work day, cook an amazing dinner, and sit back down at her computer and do another hour and a half of unpaid, essential work.

My mom is a pediatrician. Some of the families I babysat had kids as her patients. I often wondered if they knew of these late nights outside of working hours of preparation and tying up loose ends, making sure prescriptions are requested, histories updated, and emergency calls answered.

Us as young adults want work/life balance. I want to have a career and a family. But what really is work/life balance? Is it something attainable or even something to be sought?

Work, Play, Rest, Repeat?

Straight up, medicine is a giving profession. Having a personality that is willing to serve and isn’t exhausted by serving is one of the primary requirements of becoming a doctor.

For Dr. Elinor Graham if “the reason that you're going into medicine is because it gives you joy and you're giving back to your community and to your society, then absolutely do it. I wouldn't do it for any other reason. Don’t do it for money and don't do it for prestige. There are other ways to do both of those. If you want to take care of other human beings and you enjoy studying the human body and the goal and preparation of being a doctor is something that gives you joy then surround yourself with people who are going to help you get there.”

From observing my mother throughout my childhood, work, play, and rest blended together into one giant melting pot of life where the lines between each “compartment” were blurred or completely nonexistent. Despite this, I thought this blurring was normal and was not bothered by it. I thought everyone had to nerd out about the Verizon coverage map in the mountains and had a list of hikes with decent reception because everyone's mom had to be available to take emergency calls. I thought everyone’s mom would have to take calls during dinner for a broken wrist or appendicitis. I didn’t give it a second thought. I had an amazing childhood full of rich relationships and had a class act of what sacrifice looks like in my mother.

The blurring between the different spheres of life sometimes took a toll on her but was necessary to provide the appropriate care for kids and necessary direction and consolation for anxious parents. Pediatrics, the field of medical care for children, is one specialty of medicine which is notorious for lack of boundaries. There are other specialties such as radiology (X-ray) and dermatology (skin) which have a bit firmer boundary between work, play, and rest.

Despite the differences between specialties, this poses the question: how does one not get swept away by the tidal wave of overcommitment compounded by emotional and physical strain in the medical field?

Take Your Foot Off The Pedal

Dr. Lenna Liu is now a retired pediatrician who worked at Odessa Brown Clinic in Seattle – a care center which became a place where both mental and medical health providers were under the same roof. If she could give one piece of advice to aspiring young medical professionals it would be this:

“Do your own internal learning about yourself and whatever you do to deepen your own resources, your own well, your own capacity to hold on to yourself in the midst of medicine, which can really sweep you off your feet like a tidal wave. It's a powerful, powerful force.

So you have to be able to hold on to yourself in that which is not necessarily easy to do. I feel this especially when I watch residents come through. It's a 3 year residency program, and they come in with so much passion. Then being on call every couple nights, everything wears you down.

By the middle of residency, a lot of people are like, this sucks and I don't even know who I am anymore. And so it's really those self care kind of practices, reflective practices that allow you to come back to yourself, whether it is running, writing, reading, gardening, anything but just the ability to come back to yourself and remember who you are and believe in yourself and to not let that go.”

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​What's your Bullseye?

Not all doctors are my mother. Not all doctors do hours of unpaid work after dinner. Many finish their work at work. Many pediatricians work part time. The specific rhythm of work, play, and rest which is detailed above was what worked for my mom. Regardless of whether you are interested in pursuing medicine or another career, this balance is important to calibrate.

However, many make decisions in a reactionary way. Through the interviewing process, it is apparent to me that I need to make these choices of balance between the three spheres of my life in an intentional way. I don’t want to live an accidental, reactionary life. I aim to have a light which I am growing towards, a bullseye I am aiming at. What is your bullseye?

This balance also determines the quality of relationships you develop with those around you. How much overlap do you want between the public and private spheres of your life? Do you want to forget about your work day and the relationships you form there? If these questions interest you, you will want to go watch the hit TV series Severance as it offers a biting critique of modernity’s separation of public and private, identity, memory, and corporate control.

Next week we will continue examining work/life balance (more specifically identity) in medicine but through the eyes of Mark Scout (the star of Severance) instead of Ian Scott.

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Next Week: Severance and Medicine

Be well!

Your friend,

Ian Scott