Hippocrates In San Diego

Lacking Drive

Let me make one thing clear before getting too deeply into this: I love my profession. It is difficult to imagine my life if I hadn’t become a doctor. I think my skills and temperament are well suited to the craft. To top it off, I also probably wouldn’t have met my future wife if I had chosen otherwise. There are days however, when I wish I had chosen a different, more easy-going, less responsible tack in life. Sometimes working in a toll booth or even being a traveling itinerant worker has great appeal. This often happens early after waking or as I drive into work. Clearly I hate mornings.

I think the appeal of these alternate career choices is the solitary nature of them; I am by nature a person who is at relative ease by himself. Not necessarily at ease with himself, but by himself. I like people in general, but sometimes it’s just easier to not deal with them. Weak, I know. The expectations, the interpersonal wrestling matches, the egos. I just don’t find any of that appealing. There is a particular concentration in medicine of people who have these characteristics that I don’t really care for. I think that’s why I frequently don’t find myself feeling like a typical member of the profession. I want to work for my patients, not for all the other stuff that being a doctor entails. I’m not talking about the business stuff that doctors always seem to be complaining about. I realize that there is a business aspect to medicine, unfortunate as that is, and there isn’t much to do about it in the current world. I’m talking about the career-driven aspects of it; the drive to show up a “colleague,” a term that is sometimes used loosely in medicine; the desire to minimize one’s own work at the expense of others, often to the detriment of the patient; I could go on. Maybe these are things that are found only of teaching institutions, but I know there are similarly frustrating (but perhaps slightly different) concerns I would have if I were in a community setting. It’s just a personality trait of people in medicine, and I’m finding myself frustrated.

I don’t think I’m articulating myself clearly at this point. This has turned into more of a rant.

I have to remember the instances where I interacted with another doctor who really gave a damn, who had the patient’s interests foremost in his or her mind. I interact with those kinds of physicians all the time; it’s just easier to remember the times when I don’t.