Helping Medical Professionals

Doctors need help?!

I really appreciate my specialty work, seeing and helping medical professionals. It seems that they are comfortable with me for several reasons. One is that I’m very experienced, having been practicing for about 40 years now. Another reason is, when I went to graduate school I was trained side-by-side with medical students and residents. I know more about what their education and training is like than many others might. I’ve found that physicians in particular really appreciate my awareness of how difficult and often actually abusive their training was for them.

Being a medical professional is extremely stressful and they learn early not to show anyone how stressed they are feeling. This means not showing anyone how stressful work situations are, and usually not showing or telling anyone about stressful home/family/relationship situations. Practicing medicine is a lot like serving in the military.

It is actually very important not to bring your personal feelings, reactions, or opinions – into a situation where you are treating a person who has pain, fear, shock, trauma – any of the situations patients find themselves in when seeing a medical professional. But the habit of keeping feelings in goes way beyond interactions with patients. In most professional situations, emotions have not been acceptable topics for many years; this is beginning to change – but change takes time!

Most of us in medical and related fields have experienced being perceived by others as rich, powerful, or different from others in many ways. The reality is that we are not different. It’s true that we have been extremely fortunate - privileged really - in having the intellect and the drive needed to choose to work very hard, apply to highly competitive schools, push ourselves to be successful in many highly challenging situations, go into massive debt, start practicing after quite a few years of education and training – and then we’re just getting started!

Like other professionals, we don’t receive any help knowing how to navigate the world of working as a professional – as in knowing what the options might be, what the pay might be, how to negotiate, how to decide whether to work in a hospital, clinic, group practice, private practice, etc, etc. Lawyers and other professionals don’t get this kind of help, either. The only thing I have been able to think is that despite otherwise good intentions, those who teach and supervise don’t really have the desire to help young competitors.

Those early choices are highly instructive, and highly stressful. Sometimes they work out great, sometimes, not so much. The decisions to stay or go, and how long to stay in a difficult workplace has a lot of similarities to others with difficult workplace issues, certainly. But after ten or fifteen years of education and training, and with the kind of debt often carried, and the otherwise normal personal decisions regarding relationships, where to live, whether to have children – these are even more fraught for medical professionals and their significant others.

These are lonely situations, which most other folks don’t know about, and don’t know what to say about in the rare instances of confiding in them. So, most professionals learn early not to talk about the issues that trouble them the most. Sometimes, there are friends we make in the process of schooling and training – they are invaluable! At the same time, most of us don’t tell even our closest friends what is really troubling us.

It might sound weird to some folks, the idea that physicians were subjected to abusive situations during their schooling, internships and residencies. As far as I know it’s not as bad as it used to be, but still continues. And, when I see someone who was trained 20 or so years ago, the abuse is still very much remembered. In the old days, teachers and supervising physicians were convinced that they had to put their students through what they went through when they were in those positions. They believed that in order to sharpen the intellect, the ability to focus, the knowledge base necessary to do quick differential diagnoses, to quickly and surely administer treatments, surgeries, even prescribe accurately – students needed to go through severe training situations. They had to work 36 hour (or more) shifts, they had to weather the storms of intense scrutiny and verbal strictness, even verbal abuse – in order to become steadfast, reliable, exacting – well trained, in the minds of the superiors.

It was similar to generational trauma endured by many other people – parents and grandparents have often told their children and grandchildren horror stories of their own experiences, in order to justify the ways the younger ones are being treated.

What these adults hadn’t realized is that inflicting abuse on younger versions of themselves is actually their way of expressing their own anger and hurt. The original feelings are not being acknowledged or processed, just repeated.

This is a well known pattern when it comes to children/parents/grandparents – but it hasn’t been well known when it has occurred to medical professionals.

It does make a difference, now that the need for mental health help has become a lot more acceptable. I’ve seen and worked with more physicians, nurses and other medical professionals in recent years than I had previously. It’s not universal that each one has experienced abusive environments (including standard work situations as well as educational and training), but it is extremely common.

Talking about these experiences helps more than many know. Letting it out and recognizing the impacts of these experiences really helps settle old scores. It’s amazing how much talking about these experiences helps alleviate the internal pressures and incredibly intense self-criticisms that have become so habitual. Being a more experienced, mature person and professional makes a huge difference in the sense that we can understand ourselves and accept ourselves a lot more deeply and kindly than before – which leads to a much more peaceful inner experience. It also helps us recognize and own our abilities, and be proud of ourselves for once!

I could say a lot more, and will in future writing – in the meantime, call me if you want to explore your options in terms of therapy. I respond quickly – I know how hard it is to make that first call, or send that first email, text, whatever is easiest for you.