Life is short. We always hear that phrase but really don’t know what it truly means. What I mean is that life doesn’t feel short; we complain of our days being too long, or weeks too busy and dragged out. The only thing that feels too short in my life are weekends. There comes a point in life where I think you figure out what it means, you look back and seeing your 20s flew by. Life is short, and we need to live it to the fullest.
When you’re a kid, a teen and even in your 20s, you feel like you have your whole life ahead of you. In the last year, I have seen some fellow physicians suddenly pass away; I have seen colleagues be diagnosed with different forms of cancer way too young, where arguably any age is too young. It brought me to the question: How can we as physicians do our jobs well and also have some time for ourselves? Sometimes it feels like taking care of ourselves makes us a bad doctor because we should always be available for our patients all the time.
When I first finished residency, a senior physician said to me, after I had mentioned about how excited I was about getting a good number of vacation weeks, “Well, you won’t use all of the vacation you know, because you should be aware that people will need to cover for you and your patients need you.”
This was very interesting to me: Is this how certain people view vacation time? At that time I couldn’t understand what they meant, but as I have completed my first year out of residency, I understand the view, at least to some degree. When you have your “own” patients especially in a clinic, there is a sense of guilt when you are considered vacation; it may not be heavy, but it definitely lingers around maybe convincing you to take a slightly shorter amount of time off than you planned.
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