Today I’m trying to balance a million different tasks. Today I am scheduled for the normal activities of being a physician advisor including level of care reviews, peer-to-peer calls, and discussions with staff on queries that don’t make sense. But, on top of that I’m trying to encourage my hospitalist colleagues to apply for open physician advisor FTE, finish a presentation for a national meeting that’s due, write the clinical appeal letters due in the next week, practice for another presentation I am recording next week, and attend my system level physician advisor meetings scheduled today. Oh, and of course, since I’m working from home today, I should probably cycle through some laundry and dishes and say hi to my husband and kids. When I write it all down, it sounds like chaos. Living it, it feels like “normal.”
The task that gives me the most pause today is the presentation I am supposed to give on Saturday. Saturday is the graduation retreat for our internal medicine residents, and they have asked me to come and talk to them about wellness and career longevity. Specifically, they want to know more about how coaching works and how can they use their core values to help guide them like I keep talking about? At one point in my life, if asked to speak to students or residents, I would have been very purposeful about showing students the best parts of this life in medicine. But as I have gotten older, I’ve realized that there are enough other people telling them their amazing stories of patient connections, close saves, and diagnostic prowess. Besides, those are the “easy” moments to live in a lot of ways. The wins we have in our career make us feel great and can give us a renewed sense of hope and purpose. But, those moments don’t come every day. And what I want to tell them is how to live in between those moments. How do you find joy and purpose in the everyday? How do you find the career niche that looks like chaos on the outside to everyone else but is perfect for you? How do you take the theories and put them into practice in your own life?
In short, you need to hear real stories from those who have gone before you. You need to learn from the collective wisdom of your colleagues. When I talk to them on Saturday, I’m not just going to tell them about when things worked out. I am going to share the stories of my mistakes. Only by hearing about the hard times can they be prepared for their own difficult decisions. Maybe my stories will help keep them from making similar errors. At the very least, when those missteps happen, they will know they are not alone.
In this blog you will find two kinds of articles, but the point of both will be the same. This blog will be for the collective wisdom/career advice for physician advisors. Some of the articles will be written by me and some of the articles will be interviews with other physician advisors to learn what works (and what doesn’t!) from others. If you have any specific questions, you want addressed, please feel from to let me know.
-Clarissa