Latest Journal Posts
Paging Dr. Quitter: Sometimes Walking Away Is the Best Medicine
Physicians know how to persevere. We are committed and hardworking. We went through many years of advanced schooling and training, which would not have been possible without perseverance. We are used to enduring physical, mental, and even spiritual hardship.
But this admirable trait can lead to trouble. Sometimes we don’t know when to quit. We associate quitting with giving up or failure, two ideas that are foreign to our identity. But quitting, defined as “to stop doing something or leave a job or a place, " is not always negative.
Backup Plans and Bathroom Windows: A Doctor's Guide to Asking for Help
The pattern starts early. On my very first night of Orthopedic call as an intern, my upper-level resident told me to call him for anything, but “...remember, it’s a sign of weakness”. Ah, the mixed (or not so mixed) messages of training. Do it perfectly every time and don’t require any help.
Beyond Medicine: The Healing Power of Perspective in Patient Care
Recently, I read a post by another physician online about an experience he had decades ago, soon after he first became an attending in the ER. The experience still troubled him significantly.
The anecdote was one of so many in a long career on the front lines of healthcare, where life and death are often part of the daily events, amidst the otherwise mundane and ordinary.
Playing Your Own Game: Lessons from 'Miracle' for Life and Success
One of my favorite movies, and I have A LOT of them that I watch over and over again, is Miracle. This is an account of the 1980 US Olympic Hockey team, comprised of amateurs, that managed to defeat the significantly more experienced and dominant Russian team. (This was way back when before the modern “dream teams” that play now.)
Navigating Resistance: A Path to Inner Peace and Greater Productivity
The Oxford Dictionary defines resistance as the refusal to accept or comply with something. In Star Trek, when the Borg prepares to assimilate a ship it declares, “Resistance is futile”, meaning the ship has no chance of escape.
In coaching, resistance has a different connotation and is readily escapable, but takes some mental effort. It’s not an attack from without, it’s an attack from within when your mind refuses to accept the reality of the situation that you’re in.
Letting Go of Perfectionism: A New Year's Resolution for Self-Compassion
Last week I drove to my favorite trails in Point Defiance Park. The roads seemed oddly empty and quiet, even for “the time between the years” as I’ve heard it called. Perhaps I hadn’t noticed it before, since in medicine it’s always been just another week when most people don’t work, but we always had a full schedule.
The day was overcast, as it so often is during winter in the PNW. The trails seemed unusually quiet and dark as well, with fog surrounding the woods and blanketing the Sound.
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