You’ve arrived at an important milestone when someone asks you to give a grand rounds titled ... “Mid-Career Advice.” Yes, I’ve been asked.
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I’m flattered to be asked (although I hope I’m not halfway). Mid-career “crisis!” is what Google expected me to talk about when I searched on this topic. Apparently, I’d rather be me today than me in residency – you learn an awful lot in 40K patient visits. Here are a few notes from my journey:
1. Knowing how to care for patients is as important as knowing medicine. The bulk of work to be done in outpatient care depends on bonding, trust, and affecting change efficiently and effectively. Sometimes great diagnostic acumen and procedural skills are needed. Yet, for most, this isn’t hard. Access to differential diagnoses, recommended work-ups, and best practice treatments are easily accessible, just in time. In contrast, it’s often hard to convince patients of their diagnosis and to help them adhere to the best plan.
2. You can do everything right and still have it end up wrong. Medicine is more like poker than chess. In chess, most information is knowable, and there is always one best move. In poker, much is unknown, and a lot depends on chance. You might perform surgery with perfect sterile technique and still, the patient develops an infection. You could prescribe all the best treatments for pyoderma gangrenosum and the disease might still progress. Thinking probabilistically helps me make better choices and sleep better at night, especially when the outcome was not commensurate with the quality of care.
3. Patients are sometimes impertinent, sometimes wrong, sometimes stubborn, sometimes rude. “Restrain your indignation,” Dr. Osler advised his medical students in 1889, and remember that “offences of this kind come; expect them, and do not be vexed.” You might give the best care, the most compassionate, time-generous appointment, and still your patient files a grievance, posts a bad review, fails to follow through, chooses CBD oil instead. Remember, they are just people with all our shortcomings. Do your best to serve and know in your heart that you are enough and have done enough. Then move on; patients are waiting.
4. Adverse outcomes can be devastating, to us as well as to our patients. Any harm caused to a patient or an angry complaint against you can trigger anxiety, regret, and endless ruminating. Sometimes these thoughts become intrusive. Try setting boundaries. Take the time to absorb the discomfort, still knowing you are strong, you are not alone, and failure is sometimes inevitable. Learn what you can, then when you find you’re unable to stop your thoughts, choose an activity (like AngryBirds!) to break your thoughts. You will be a healthier human and provide better care if you can find your equanimity often and early.
Dr. Jeffrey Benabio
5. Amor fati, or “love your fate.” You cannot know what life has planned. Small, seemingly insignificant events in my life changed my path dramatically. I could have been a store manager in Attleboro, Mass., an orthopedic surgeon in Winston-Salem, or a psychologist in Denver. I could never have known then that I’d end up here, as chief of dermatology in San Diego. Rather than depend only on a deliberate strategy with happiness at your destination being “find the job you love,” rely more on an evolving strategy. Do your job and then exploit opportunities as they develop. Forget sunk costs and move ahead. Don’t depend on fate for your happiness or search for a career to fulfill you. Close your eyes and find the happiness in you, then open your eyes and be so right there. Love your fate.
Dr. Benabio is director of healthcare transformation and chief of dermatology at Kaiser Permanente San Diego. The opinions expressed in this column are his own and do not represent those of Kaiser Permanente. Dr. Benabio is @Dermdoc on Twitter. Write to him at dermnews@mdedge.com.