'Do you practice?'
'Have you stopped seeing patients?'
'Ohh, you work only in clinic, not in hospital?'
' All the time you are seen at some places'
'Look at xyz, how big hospital he /she built. What are you doing?'
Look at abc. How famous doctor he is. Why don't you become like him?
My humble response to my wellwishers who pose these questions to me:
Life is like a Car 🚗 ! Our life has 4 tyres!
🌸Personal life
🌸Family life
🌸Social life
🌸Professional life
Offcouse, each of these tyres (dimensions) have further ramifications.eg.
(a) Personal life includes hobbies, sports(playing or watching),watching movies, shopping, exercise, yoga, adventures, spiritualilty and so on.
(b) Family life is spending quality time with family members.
(c) Social life is spending time with people other than blood relatives like colleagues, friends etc.
(d)The last one is Professional life. I will elaborate it further. The earlier one's I will elaborate in a later post.
The professional life has various facets. As a doctor, I can tell the facets for medical professionals. It includes the clinical practice, reading medical literature, attending conferences, bedside teaching, giving presentations, health education and awareness, publications, earning money!
Coming back to my experience. I have practiced almost in all strata of medical care. From a remote village in India to a teaching hospital and further to a top class corporate hospital.
The interesing part I found about the medical profession is, it's difficult to have the luxury of spending quality time on each facet of the professional life only (leave apart the other dimensions of life like personal, family, social life). If you concentrate in one aspect, the another one is ignored. I feel that's the reason of frustration among doctors and the cause of burnout. It's an impossible task to fulfill all that you want from your profession, while maintaining a balance of other 3 aspects.
As your clinical practice increases personal, family and social life starts suffering. Because of your continuous focus only on professional life, sometimes a situation comes where you suffer from a crisis in other aspect of life e.g. Health, family life etc.
There comes a point where you have to really sit down and decide what do I want in life?
My answer to what I want in life is 'baseline peace' if not 'ecstacy'.
What suits best for your seniors, colleagues, juniors might not suit well for you. Everyone is on their own journey. We need to find a right balance which suits best for your health, family etc. It's a very subjective situation. I believe everyone is unique in the world in terms of attitude and capacity. We have to tailorise our life as per our own subjective strengths and requirements. Hence, the professional life is only one of the dimension of life. Its not 'the only' dimension of life. Its very important to maintain a balance of each dimension. Having said that, its very difficult for each medical professional to maintain balance and give justice to each dimension.
Hence my answers to the questions posed to me during my journey are as follows -
'Do you practice?'
No, I don't practice. I play the game of life (the larger phenomenon) than clinical practice.
'Have you stopped seeing patients?'
No, I haven't. I treat them with more passion and energy. I give them more time as my other dimensions of life are take care of.
'Ohh, you work only in clinic, not in hospital?
I do what suits best for my health and family. You are doing what suits best for you!
All the time you are seen at some non-medical places?
a) Life is a bloody brief happening. Make the most of it.
b) It will be boring to post pictures of me being at workplace at all the other times between these visits to different places.
c) I like to see different places. It's my hobby.
Look at xyz, how big hospital he /she built. What are you doing?
a) xyz is born with resources like capacity, attitude, financial backing, manpower. He/She has ability to deal with pressure. He/She has good administrative skills. I don't have any one of them.
b) I want to do better as an individual, as a family person, as a social person ! Becoming a good doctor is a part of the whole process and not the only goal of life.
It reminds me of one sentence which my DNB teacher Amritkar sir taught me. 'First try to become a good human being, you will naturally become a good doctor. I am still trying the first part of the sentence.
Look at abc. How famous doctor he is. Why don't you become like him?
He or she has that much talent, physical and mental health. I don't have it in that capacity. This comparison of one life with another life reminds me of a quote by Albert Einstein
“Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”
The decisions taken in life are never right or wrong, you have to turn your subjective decisions right!
