Unemployed doctor?

It's cloudy with intermittent showers in Seattle. I have essentially finished my travel for the sabbatical and am now struggling to write stiff medical writing which causes me no end of frustration. This has never been my career calling but I consider it necessary to be a rounded clinician. It is PAINFUL!!!

I will make intermittent trips to National Jewish although my money is running out so I can't go for long periods. It has been job hunting time for me over the past couple months and that has been harder on me emotionally than I was expecting. I left my partnership on the Eastside last Fall after announcing my departure a year and a half prior to that. When I announced my departure I was being stalked and receiving murder threats, I was working 80 hours a week, had few friends, and I was having visceral disagreements with a few of my partners. It was clear that I needed to change my life drastically or I was going to lose my composure in a big way. I thought that I was part of a haunted practice and hospital, but I know I was a contributor to the problem as well. I sometimes couldn't keep my mouth shut when I should have and I could not seem to gain alliances. So what does that mean? I was odd man out, wrong in the context that I worked. And as much as I enjoyed many of my patients and other doctors at the hospital, as well as the nature of my work, I was driving some of my partners, and administrators, nuts: as much as they were driving me nuts. I was a Democrat in a Republican society, a city guy in the suburbs, a square peg in a round hole, etc. As much as I disagreed philosophically with them, they disagreed with me. I couldn't contain my opinions to my eventual detriment since I now have no job, by my own doing. As much as I maintained my ideals I also cut myself off from what I enjoy immensely, medicine and the milieu of the hospital/clinic social community. I would like to think that I have learned something from this and I plan to be more politique and reticent in the future.

Ideals are important but happiness seems to lie somewhere between inward looking idealism and being an emotional whore. I haven't found that middle ground and hope that I do someday, otherwise I'm going to be a cranky old man who yells at kids and smells like moldy leaves. Ernest Hemingway had rooted ideals and boasted of judging the worth of his life by the number of enemies he had; but eventually he shot himself. That's no way to live. Maybe attending to ones deeply held beliefs is important, but not being stiffly judgemental seems similarly important. It can be isolating and off putting, and different than mere disagreement. The path between disagreeing and judging seems fuzzy. But also, when is enough disagreement enough? Enough to suggest that you're in the wrong crowd? I have learned that ethicists often pose more questions than they answer so I'll pose this answer to the above question. It's in the hands of the Lord! OK, that one isn't so satisfying. How's this? When the burden of maintaining a relationship becomes more than the benefit, it's time to move on, hoping to find something more congruent and comfortable. I hope to find it but it's not comfortable looking. It's lonely and uncertain. But indeed I brought it on myself and must deal...

I have wanted to write about some interview experiences, so I'll do it in the next blog. -Jim O'B