self-care
Even Shame Has Its Limits
Christina Georgeades, MD “You mean every day should be shame day.” I was walking behind two of my co-residents the last month of my intern year when I heard the hurtful comment. It was Pride month, and in the professional world, I was a closeted gay resident. One of them had seen a Pride poster on the wall of the hospital hallway, and it had been heartwarming to hear her genuinely say, “Every day should be Pride Day.” But then my other co-resident responded to her with their derisive remark, the words quickly overriding her uplifting one. My heart sunk upon hearing it. Shame is something that those in the LGBTQIA+ community are uniquely familiar with, and it’s something most of us spend our lives overcoming to some degree. The words, therefore, cut deeply, especially considering I still battled with my own feelings of shame at that time. It hurt,...
Forget About Perfectionism; Instead, Strive for Excellence
By Fara Bellows, MD As surgeons, we are high-level performers who expect specific results from precise planning and execution. Throughout our education, we developed a keen awareness of the requirements for a particular outcome. Some of us may have even over-prepared during our academic years in order to ensure success. The stakes are much higher when practicing medicine, and we may now strive for perfection, as we know that a single misstep can result in a devastating patient outcome. Fortunately, we remain inherently detail oriented, thorough, and conscientious when providing patient care. Sometimes, despite our best efforts, we have bad outcomes. Even a patient who undergoes a technically flawless operation can have complications. So how do we reconcile our desire for perfection in an uncontrollable world? Essentially, we must learn to comfortably co-exist with our negative outcomes and accept the fact that bad things will happen. The only way to...
A Weightlifters Guide to Fitness during Medical Education
By Sophie Hockran Two years into medical school, and I have learned a lot, as expected. Many who have come before me know the feeling of learning so much information that your brain may explode. Being the first physician in my family, I was truly not prepared for this amount of information. I thought I was prepared, but it is hard to know before doing it. I think I need to make it clear that I am not just talking about the information from lectures, labs, and clinics. It is the hidden curriculum. Moving away from home, handling interpersonal relationships, finances, research, leadership, volunteering–the many arms of being a medical student and surgical hopeful, all create a unique set of challenges. The most important thing that I have learned is to hold onto the things that bring me joy. Coming from a collegiate track and field career, I have leaned...
To Do’s Before Starting Residency
By Alyssa Brown Congratulations are in order for the many new women surgeons that will be joining our ranks as interns next year! Last year, I felt like time flew by between opening that envelope and starting intern orientation. The finish line of my intern year is in sight, and looking back now, there were so many things I wished I had or hadn’t done. Here is my unofficial guide to getting ready for residency. Do not study! This is one of the last times you will have time that is completely yours. You should not worry yet about how to study for next year or try to review for residency. The time will come for in-service exams, but that time is not now. Update your CV This is very lame to do, but it is important. It is helpful to start residency with an up-to-date CV. It takes time,...
Diversify Ourselves
By Dr. Chantal Reyna How well would you handle not being able to perform surgery anymore? The real question is “How much of your identity is based on being a surgeon?” We tend to define ourselves by our professions. Our profession has been a large part of our identity. We have dedicated our formative years to this profession. When we lose our profession, we lose a part of ourselves. It is a void; it is a hollowing. How can we put ourselves in a position where we still recognize ourselves if we lose a piece of our identity? Resilience is the answer. Resilience is flexibility. Resilience is adapting to unexpected changes, stressors, or adversity. Resilience is strengthened by diversifying ourselves and can be learned. We are the sum of many parts. Think about jigsaw puzzles or impressionist artwork. Each individual piece combines and interacts to build a structure that is...
Couples matching in the age of virtual residency interviews: a resident’s perspective
By: Mariana Tumminello, MD As the time to finalize rank lists quickly approaches, I can’t help but think back to the time when we were, as they say, “in the trenches.” To that time when the anxiety and nervousness had taken over both our lives. Compound this with the uncertainty of the first ever virtual interview season, and my Type A personality was hitting its limit. Would two programs really take us if they couldn't get to know us in person? Would we both be making compromises, or would it just be one of us? As these thoughts flew through my head, I realized there was only so much I could control. Both myself and my partner had done the hard work of learning all we could and dedicating ourselves to this career we had chosen. Now, it was time to truly think about what we wanted for our future...
Compassion as a Strategy to Mitigate Moral Injury in our Lives.
By: Elizabeth Perazza Back to 2009 after 8 years of experience as a Board-Certified Urologic Surgeon, I was told by a supervisor that I was not contributing to the training program. This supervisor’s opinion led to a plan that resulted in my removal as faculty of the training program. I was 1 of 3 female urology attendings amongst 20-25 male attendings. For years in therapy with mental health specialists, I was able to overcome feelings of shame, inadequacy and incompetence that subsequently threw me to a diagnosis of adjustment disorder with depressive features. Moral injury is defined as the profound psychological distress that results from actions, or the lack of actions, which violate one's moral or ethical code. Morally injurious events can include acts of perpetration or omission, or experiences of betrayal from leaders or trusted others. Moral injury is not a mental illness, although experiences of potentially morally injurious...
Surgery Residency is Like a Family
By AlleaBelle Bradshaw, MD There are a lot of cliches from the interview trail, most of which are at least partially true. One of them is that residents and faculty will say something about how their residency is “like a family.” Of course, it is generally a positive thing that residents view their programs as families. I don’t mean to be the person that ruins this by taking it too seriously, but we should consider the meaning of something we have started saying almost automatically. I write to share my thoughts about what family means, how residency is like a family, and considerations for both residents and applicants when using the metaphor moving forward. My thoughts are colored by my personal experience with family. My family was a mostly traditional one with two parents and three kids. I am the youngest with two older brothers. We loved, learned, fought, and...
Social Dimensions of Wellness
By Whitney Jin I currently attend medical school in the Texas Medical Center (TMC)—the largest medical center in the world. It truly is its own concrete jungle–I joke that while looking for apartments to live in for medical school, I prioritized the TMC skyline over the downtown skyline for a more fitting view. As a student still in the preclinical curriculum, I find that it becomes tempting (and comforting) to fall into a routine of classes, clinics, co-curriculars, and catching up on sleep. The two-mile radius between campus and its adjacent hospitals means that the vast majority of students spend most of their productive hours in a classroom, hospital, or a research lab. While it is a true privilege to be surrounded by so many patients, with diverse backgrounds and illnesses, we must remember that within medical facilities, we only meet patients at a snapshot moment in their lives. That...
Destination Wellness- The Intellectual and Spiritual Domains
By Nikita Machado “Physician, heal thyself!” Across history, these words have been attributed to different sources, including Jesus in the Gospel of Luke, the Genesis Rabbah in 300 B.C, and the Greek playwright Aeschylus, in whose play Prometheus Bound the chorus laments “Like an unskilled doctor, fallen ill, you lose heart and cannot discover by which remedies to cure your own disease.” Oh, the irony. As physicians, and more specifically surgeons, we are part of a rare group of people. We care tremendously for the health and well-being of our patients– going out of our way to ensure the best outcomes we can for them. However, self-care often falls by the wayside, and we don’t give our own minds and bodies the fuel and care they need to perform optimally. As current data shows, those who listen to their inner cues and pay attention to their wellness can sustain a...
