Advice From A Senior Doctor

I love being a doctor. 

I do not enjoy many aspects of practicing medicine in the U.S. healthcare system. 

In the struggle to balance these truths, mentorship from several extraordinary physicians has steadied me.  As gifted diagnosticians and models of bedside medicine, they have meant as much to me personally as the knowledge they shared. 

Their examples have shaped the academic, professional, and personal facets of my career. Their influence reaches far beyond any single lesson, rotation, or clinical encounter. I return to these mentors’ words often. Their guidance provides a framework I use to approach diagnostic challenges.    Perhaps more importantly, they sustain me through the personal toll of practicing medicine—when the invisible workload is heavy and the productivity expectations feel dehumanizing.  Their mentorship has become part of how
I practice, but also part of how I endure a career that betrays its own core principles. I worked more than a decade for the privilege to care for others, though I am penalized for caring for my own loved one battling a neurologic disorder.

Yet, some of the most significant advice I reflect on comes from someone I likely would not recognize outside of a hospital boardroom: a senior physician I have never met in person. During a virtual leadership course in our hospital system, he described physicians and healthcare executives as similar to members of an American football team. The offensive and defensive teams share the same goal—to win the game—but they do not play the same position, occupy the field at the same time, follow the same playbook, or
see the game from the same vantage point.

That analogy has stayed with me because it gave language to a tension I feel sharply every day in U.S. healthcare. Physicians and healthcare executives are often frustrated by one another precisely because their
practical objectives are inherently different.  Expecting the same priorities from them is unrealistic; however, expecting alignment around a common purpose of excellent clinical care and patient safety is essential.

That insight has profoundly shaped how I approach practicing medicine in the U.S.  My mentors have taught me what kind of physician I strive to be: rigorous, compassionate, steady, and humane. The words of this senior physician in the corporate executive suite have helped me navigate the administrative and financial framework in which that work takes place.
Together, these influences help me pick my proverbial battles, advocating for patients while recognizing that complex systems require collaboration among people with different roles, pressures, and perspectives.

I am deeply grateful to the mentors I know personally, whose examples have shaped and sustained me in ways I cannot truly express.   These physicians allowed me to find a path to experience the joy of practicing medicine, albeit in a healthcare infrastructure that I do not particularly like.

I am equally struck by the power of a few well-chosen words on one ordinary day from someone I may never properly meet.