BY BONNIE DARVES
Identifying Priorities and Working with an Independent Coach or Advisor Can Help Physicians Reframe Their Work Lives
Feodora Chiosea /iStock/Getty Images.
It might have taken a crisis — first quietly brewing as niggling individual-physician dissatisfaction and then becoming the full-scale, profession-wide dilemma of burnout — for organizations to get the message that action is needed, fast, to prevent
more physicians from leaving medicine and to help them regain professional fulfillment.
The good news is that two positive developments are happening. First, individual physicians are obtaining the input they need, via coaches or mentors or deep personal examination, to identify what’s not working in their professional lives and muster
the courage to at least right their ships. Second, a growing number of organizations recognize that physicians must be able to pursue work that matters to them and be supported in that quest if they’re going to retain them. Wellness programs are
proliferating, and some organizations are making coaching and other resources available to physicians who want to adjust their work lives or careers.
Physicians who have received coaching on their own or through employer-sponsored programs are using what they learn to reconfigure their professional lives. Some opt to leave medicine, but many are finding ways to adjust their roles and work lives
to recapture the fulfillment they once enjoyed.
Sunny Smith, MD, is the founder and chief executive officer of Empowering Women Physicians, a large national company that provides collaborative career coaching and forums with a focus on humanizing the physician experience. Dr. Smith has witnessed
the full spectrum — from physicians who ultimately decide to opt out of practice to those who were on the verge of leaving medicine but instead reframed their careers and went on to become department chairs. “There’s really no wrong way,” Dr.
Smith said. The key, she contends, is to “identify the facts” about the dissatisfaction they’re experiencing and then define and pursue the adjustment they need.
Start with Self-Discovery
Preparing for a career adjustment begins, Dr. Smith said, with an important question that physicians must ask themselves and then answer fully and honestly, “What matters most to me, and what’s getting in the way? It’s about helping physicians who
feel trapped realize that they have power and agency — that they can make decisions regardless of their job,” said Dr. Smith, who spent her academic career at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine as a clinical professor of
family medicine and public health.
For Gina Geis, MD, an Albany, New York, neonatologist, it was a nagging sense that something was amiss — not full-on burnout — that in part led her to seek a coach. On paper, she was ticking off the up-the-ladder boxes. She completed fellowships in
perinatal medicine and bioethics and was enjoying her practice and academic pursuits.
In her bioethics role, Dr. Geis developed a keen interest in the intersection between moral distress and physician burnout and eventually carved out a role as Albany Med’s chief wellness officer and became its first vice-chair for professional development.
The coaching experience, in her view, is a prerequisite for wellness officers. It helped her recognize self-imposed impediments to growth. “I discovered that I tended to put limitations on my career growth and to attribute my successes to external
factors. And I found that I hadn’t thought about ‘expanding my lane’ outside academia,” she said. “The experience was truly life-changing.” So powerful, in fact, that Dr. Geis decided to become a certified career coach to help other physicians
create more fulfilling careers.
“Even if physicians come in and say, ‘I’m done with medicine’, or ‘I want to leave my job,’ I encourage them to learn how to love their job more while they’re still doing it,” Dr. Geis said, or to refocus their work lives on the aspects of medicine
that fulfill them. “Sometimes we can create new jobs that didn’t exist before,” Dr. Geis said. The key, in her view, is determining what your values are and leading with them. “When you do this, the world sees you differently,” she said.
Tips for the Journey
Sources offered additional advice for physicians beginning or navigating the journey toward a more satisfying career — or life:
Surround yourself with people making changes in their own lives or in the system. Physicians sometimes feel isolated when they’re struggling in their careers, Dr. Smith said. Rather than just toughing it out alone, it can be helpful
to identify people who are thriving or making changes and learn from them, she said.
Don’t just change your circumstances. Switching jobs can relieve immediate stress or get you out of a toxic environment, but don’t count on it being the solution you’re seeking to your dissatisfaction, said Dr. Shahbandar. Physicians
should instead commit to rigorous self-evaluation first, either on their own or working with a coach or another third party. “Observe yourself when you’re happy and also when you’re frustrated to determine the facts,” she said. “Then go from there.”
Keep the faith. In Dr. Trocciola’s view, it’s an ideal time for physicians to ask for what they want because organizations — and the world — need them. “You really can create a career that works for you. People say you can’t be a
part-time surgeon, but you can,” she said.
Excerpt from “Reconfiguring Your Physician Career for Greater Professional Fulfillment” by Bonnie Darves. To read the full-length article, click here.
Career resources content posted on NEJM CareerCenter is produced by freelance health care writers as an advertising service of NEJM Group, a division of the Massachusetts Medical Society, and should not be construed as coming from, or representing the views of, the New
England Journal of Medicine, NEJM Group, or the Massachusetts Medical Society.
