Mirage

Already in medical school, I started thinking in terms of “what if I, for some reason, at some point in my life can’t practice medicine anymore? What would become of me personally and professionally?”

These thoughts very soon crystallized into an opinion that I hold to this day: there needs to be more in life than just your [medical] career. Putting all your eggs in one basket may seem like the appealing thing to do and it might take you far in your field, but what is the cost? In economics, we often talk about the alternative cost of any investment – a fictive construct that can be used to measure how well your investment was in comparison to the alternatives. The alternative cost is the combined sum of everything that you gave up pursuing your chosen path, and from an economical point of view, one should try to keep this cost as low as possible.

With this framework in mind, single-mindedly pursuing your goal with all your possible resources seems like a very good investment. But we are more than machines filling only one function. Human beings and human civilization are such intricate machineries that it would be comically reductionist to think in this way. Instead, I believe it is equally important to pursue your other passions in life. Perhaps not all of them, but certainly some of them to some extent at all points in time. Why, one might ask? First of all, I believe that medicine is not just about coming to the correct diagnosis thanks to your impeccable medical knowledge. It is equally much about creating a space where the patient feels seen, heard, and safe. This is, to a large extent, done by connecting to said patient. How do you connect to another human being? By being human.

Being human while being a medical doctor is sometimes very difficult. Medicine has, to our great benefit, reached a depth that only a couple of generations ago seemed like a mirage. However, in doing so, there is always the risk of “dehumanifying” medicine, making it mechanical and cold. I remember vividly a patient I saw together with a consulting urologist when I was still a medical student. The patient had hematuria, i.e., blood in the urine, and on top of that a progressing kidney failure on the one kidney that was still functioning. This is, unfortunately, a situation with very poor prognosis unless the reason the kidney is failing can be quickly amended. The patient wasn’t feeling very well and was asking the urologist about the situation. To my utter disbelief, the urologist did 1) not sit down with the patient, 2) didn’t properly explain the situation, 3) failed to mention how severely ill the patient was and 4) failed to even make eye-contact with the patient. He simply walked to the window, stared out of it with his back turned to the patient, and told him that “this is not a good situation”, before departing from the room.

Medicine is full of stories like this, and I carry many more with me. My point is that it doesn’t matter whether you are the greatest surgeon that ever lived if you cannot connect with your patients. The question that follows, naturally, is: why should you, then, pursue your passions in parallel with your medical career just in order to connect with patients? The answer to that depends on your angle, but I’d say it’s a question with many factors to consider, only one of which is directly related to the patient.

First of all, you yourself are probably more happy if you get to do things you like in your free-time. Being in a good mental place is important for your sleep, eating habits, exercise routines, clinical judgment, alertness and a multitude of other factors, all of which boils down to you being able to achieve a higher level of performance. So, do things you love doing that is not only related to doing your job (even though it’s awesome that you love your job!).

Furthermore, we are not individual entities isolated from one another. The doctor is one of a whole team of people that meet and take care of the patient. I previously mentioned that we need to connect with the patient. Equally important is that we connect with our team. The way to connect with other people is by doing things that bring people together – the medium doesn’t matter but common mediums include singing, exercising, following a sport, dancing, playing in a band, photography, art etc. Pursuing your interest in these fields will allow you to connect with a multitude of different people in different ways, providing a way of understanding them better and giving you common ground to build a relationship around. It might also help in communication through music, poetry, art or something else. Finally, it will show that you are a human being, and not a doctor that is only interested in the disease of the patient, but interested in the patient him-/herself, which will increase the likelyhood of them opening up to you about the stuff that matters.

This is how I’ve thought about in what ways pursuing my interests can enhance my career as a doctor. But I also meditated about the possibility that, someday, something might happen that makes me unable to work as a doctor. If being a doctor is my whole reason for existing, that would require me to redefine myself in order to move on from medicine. Having several pursuits, albeit not on a professional level, makes my foundation as a person stronger and makes me less prone to feel out of place when one of the pillars of my life changes form or is removed. So apart from making me a better person and practitioner, it makes me more stable and more versatile to pursue interests that are not connected to medicine.

I called this blog entry “mirage”. I was initially supposed to take the essay in another direction, but ended up in the swamp of career and personal development. A mirage is defined as “an optical illusion” or “an unrealistic hope or wish that cannot be achieved”. I think of all the social media profiles with impossible CV:s that certainly look impressive, but what do they say beyond the fact that the person in question has had an admirable, single-minded pursuit of their career? It might seem as if they are extremely fit for practice and it might be alluring to think that this means they carry a competence that is way beyond the profiles with less… prolific CV:s, but I would invite you to think about the alternative cost of this pursuit. The classical response would be that this is the way to go and that this single-mindedness is a fast track to career progression, but I would like to broaden this view a bit. I think that in order to be the best doctor you can be, you need to work on your humanity. And this is not done by single-mindedly pursuing medicine or medical research. This is done by interacting with people, being creative, and by reflecting on your place in society.