Anatomy of an Affair

It started out innocently enough.

You liked the company. She didn't complain. Being with her made you feel complete.

There were the promises of complete satisfaction; that you'd be a hero.

So you stayed up late, lost sleep over being the best.

But soon enough, it became clear that this affair was a one-way street.

She didn’t love you back.

One then one day, you realized you were addicted.

“I take charts to bed with me,” an orthopedic surgeon confessed. “And sometimes I fall asleep with them.” 

I pictured him, a chart on his chest, the details of their condition as close to his heart as a lover should be. 

“I’m preparing for my surgeries the next day," he reasoned. "My patients deserve that.”

But where is the line?

What do patients, clients and bosses deserve?

In professions where lives are on the line, it's easy to put all of the job in the life-or-death category.

Does bringing work home with you actually improve patient care? Or any job?

Of course, looking over a chart in order to create a treatment plan is essential, but where must that line be drawn?

Taking work home with you is just another way to never really come home. You're always away and this breeds resentment for the job that you fell in love with.

Everyone needs to be able to take off their work clothes and come home. This is a basic human right. How can anyone’s loss of humanity (and sleep) —  even in service of another person’s health — be the right thing to do?

While the calling to practice medicine is a high one, both heroic and tragic, something is terribly out of balance when physicians believe that patients “deserve” the complete neglect of their own basic needs. This is a mindset fostered by the medical industrial concept that has left doctors burned out, depressed and all-too-often suicidal.

Next time you hear yourself saying something like, “patients deserve that,” think about what it is they really deserve.

Patients deserve to see their physicians happy, fulfilled, well-rested and healthy -- not a shell of a human being in a white coat, dispensing mediations and lifestyle recommendations they themselves do not follow: 8 hours of sleep, regular exercise, healthy diet, moderate alcohol consumption among them.

Whether you're in medicine or any field that has you believing that your work deserves your whole body, mind and spirit, it's time to take a look at where you are.

What do you deserve? What keeps your cup full? What helps you fall asleep at night? Sleeping a full night is your birthright.