Quitting clinical medicine is not an easy decision to make. One of the questions I’ve personally received over and over again is “how did you make the decision to quit residency?” That is such a great question, and one that I address in detail in my book “Residency Drop Out” which you can purchase here on amazon.
But I want to give you a short version here. In this blog post I want to walk you through how I made my decision to change careers in 3 simple steps.
To give you some context, It didn’t happen all at once. There wasn’t one “aha” moment perse, but a series of moments strung together that led me to the right decision of quitting clinical medicine
As I talk about in my very first podcast episode, Why I Quit Being a Doctor, during my 2nd year of my OBGYN residency I was completely miserable. I was regularly doing 24hr shifts and 80hr weeks and on top of that STILL taking work home with me. I felt so burnt out and depleted.
What I wanted more than anything was to lay my head on a pillow and sleep for a year. At least.
I felt resentful of my patients and trapped inside a life I had chosen for all the wrong reasons. Every part of me dreamed of quitting residency and pursuing a different life, but actually doing it seemed impossible.
Actually, doing anything at all seemed impossible because I was exhausted on a deep cellular level.
Step One of Quitting Clinical Medicine: Surrender
Thankfully, through the years I had developed the habit of journaling in times of struggle. Sometimes the way I journal is really more like a written prayer. A message offered up to the universe or whoever it is up there listening.
During one of those nights, in my second year of residency when I was feeling particularly low, my journaling looked like this:
“Dearest universe, please help me because I feel trapped. I am so so over residency but I feel like there is no way out. How can I see this differently? How can I find a way to be happy? Please help me and guide me because something has to change”
These words were my surrender.
This surrender was the first powerful moment in my journey of quitting clinical medicine and making a career change. Surrendering is powerful because it is a way of handing over your problems to the universe, to a power greater than you. It opens you up to greater solutions and possibilities and in my case it opened me up to grace.
Taking a Leave of Absence
Grace came in the form of my program director suggesting I take a 5 week leave of absence from residency, essentially so I could “check myself before I wrecked myself”. I didn’t quite know it at the time- but this was exactly what I had asked for during my surrender. This was the space and time I needed to get clear on what I wanted.
I did a whole podcast episode about why taking a leave of absence is so important an how YOU can take some time off to get clarity. It’s called Before You Quit Your Job…. Try This.
During my leave of absence, I laid out some clear rules for myself to minimize overwhelm. I didn’t have to figure out my whole life. I just had to figure out if I wanted to go back to residency or not. Did I see a happy future for myself as an OBGYN? Having this one question to answer, although still daunting, was much more manageable than answering all the millions of other questions swirling through my mind.
As we all do when we have burning questions on our hearts, I turned to google for the answers. I googled things like “quitting residency”, “what to do with your medical degree”, “can you declare bankruptcy on your students loans”, etc.
I came upon a website called thehappyMD.com and, on a whim, set up a discovery call with a life coach who specialized in physician burnout. Thank God I did this because during our call I had another powerful moment of profound insight.
Step Two of Quitting Clinical Medicine: Get Clarity
One of the questions my coach asked me on our discovery call was “What is standing in the way of you living your dream life?”
After reflecting on this for a moment I said…. “My $100,000+ in student loans”. To make sure she understood me, my coach repeated back to me “So…. the only thing standing in the way of you living the life you truly desire is money?”.
….. Whoa. That realization struck me like a frying pan in the face.
The whole time I was walking around feeling lost, confused and trapped, that was my fear in disguise. I actually knew exactly what I wanted but was trying to talk myself out of doing that thing because I was scared. Scared of never making enough money to pay back my loans. Scared of being in debt my whole life.
Now this was a completely valid fear, so once I had this realization it didn’t just disappear. But the powerful shift for me was the awareness of the fear.
Here’s the thing: it is impossible to face your fears at all if you aren’t able to recognize them. What this life coach gave me was a gift that changed the trajectory of my whole life. She gave me clarity. After our coaching session, I was able to shift from feeling lost and confused to acutely aware of my fear for the obstacle that it was.
Step Three of Quitting Clinical Medicine: Face Your Fears
The next powerful moment of my story happened on a plane on the way back from a week long camping trip in Utah. I had spent the week clearing my mind and hiking through Utah’s national parks. On that plane ride home I decided it was finally time to face the fears I had identified with my coach.
I got out my journal and reflected on this powerful question: “What are all the stories I am telling myself about why I can’t quit residency?”
I filled two pages with all of these what ifs.
“What if I quit and am unhappy in the next thing I choose?”
“What if I can never pay back my loans?”
“What if I have to move back in my with parents?”
” What if people think I’m crazy?”
What if what if what if. And then… after I got all of that out of my system. At the bottom of the page I wrote…
“But what if I never try”
And let me tell you… that one fear. The fear of never doing this thing on my heart- that was scarier than all of the other fears combined.
And that’s when I knew.
I SHOULD quit residency…. Became I MUST quit residency. Once you see something with that laser focused, crystal clarity, you can’t un see it. And eventually, you have to act on it.
So that’s it. That’s how I made this crazy, decision of quitting clinical medicine. I surrendered to the universe. I got clarity through an insightful conversation with a life coach and I unraveled my fears by journaling them all out on paper.
If you are struggling with a career in medicine, feeling burnout and exhausted and wondering if you should just quit, you are not alone!
What you need first and foremost is clarity. Lucky for you I’ve created a totally FREE mini course where I can help you with just that! Click below to grab your 5 Days to Career Clarity Mini Course and figure out your next career steps.
XO, Coach Chels
