Its hard to achieve a work-life balance for physicians. You can easily feel like there is not enough time in the day.
Instead of taking downtime to rest you get caught up on the treadmill of achievement?
Where you are constantly chasing down the next goal, comparing yourself to others and living your life for other people’s approval.
During her anesthesia residency, Dr. Dawn Baker was unintentionally caught up in this treadmill of achievement. She was working long hours and preparing herself for a competitive fellowship, until she started experiencing a host of non-specific symptoms that culminated in a scary diagnosis and a surgery.
Getting sick was the wake up call that she needed to jolt her off the treadmill and bring her back to her values and to what was important in her life.
During this episode Dawn and I discuss…
- Her reasons for going into medicine in the first place, and what caused her to veer off course
- The diagnosis that served as a wake up call and changed everything
- The practice of creating work-life balance for physicians
- Creating space to follow your interests and passions
- Avoiding the dangerous trap of comparing yourself to others
Dawn’s story is truly inspirational and I am so excited for you to listen in. Click the audio player above to listen or you can go to Apple podcasts, Spotify or search “Life After Medicine” wherever you listen to podcasts.
Dawn’s career journey
Dawn started out her early adult life being an engineer. Together with her husband, they traveled to different places to rock-climb. She wanted to do something that would be different than engineering because she wanted more location freedom. She values freedom, continuous learning, challenging herself and adventure.
Losing the work-life balance for physicians
Dawn flourished during the intern year and got the intern of the year award. After that, she was groomed to reach great heights in anesthesiology. It was great at first, but it started to become overwhelming with all the things she needed to learn during her residency.
During this time she felt like she started to get on the treadmill of achievements and lose track of why she got into medicine in the first place.
In the middle of residency, she wanted to start a family, but she lost her period. Initially she thought that it was just related to stress, depression and burnout. Then she consulted with her reproductive endocrinologist and they told her that she had stress-induced menopause.
After a few months of still not felling right, she got an MRI of her head and they found a large adenoma. She had a major surgery in the department where she worked with all her attending physicians looking after her. This served as a HUGE wakeup call.
Waking up to what’s important
Everything I thought I was. All the identities I had wrapped up in my ego were challenged. It took away everything I thought I knew about myself.
Dawn Baker, MD
Getting sick was a major challenge to her identity. She saw herself as an athlete with high hopes of being a chief resident, but all of that didn’t seem as important anymore. She had significant blindness that affected her career. It also changed how she sees life. With that experience being a patient, it made her question everything she knew about herself.
A part of why she had gone to medicine is because she wanted to marry science to service. She wanted to help others on a different kind of level. When she became a patient, she realized she was not different to everyone else. It was a humbling experience that jolted her back into a common humanity.
Finding the work-life balance for physicians
Once she became sick, she knew that she needed to take a step back to find a better work-life balance. Her husband pleaded for her not to do a fellowship and instead to do other things that she enjoys. That’s when she look for part-time jobs with a lot of time off and focused back on her values.
Before I got sick I was caught up on the treadmill of achievement. Once I became sick I decided to take a step back and focus on taking care of myself.
Dawn Baker MD
What does balance look like?
She had a lot of hate in herself and perfectionism before she got sick. Then after that, she was very grateful. She was grateful that she did not need any chemo and that her illness was curable. She went from self-hatred to self-compassion.
She started with writing a blog and looked for a name that fits and aligns to her goals. Medicine is a practice; balance is also a practice. Balance is a continuum and a practice, it’s something that needs to be continuously examined in our lives. Practicing the balance in our lives is like playing the orchestra.
Seeking her next challenge
With her love of writing and being a mom, she wanted to take on another challenge. There was an opportunity to speak in a state in anesthesiology conference and it all started from there. In one of her conferences, she was asked if she was coaching. When the pandemic hit, she started to look into it and had trainings to do coaching.
She saw other speakers who are also the same as her and thought maybe she can also do that. She cleared out space and it came right through. For Dawn, the most difficult part of practicing balance is not comparing to other people who are doing similar things. She did some trainings on mindfulness to help her focus on certain things.
Resources/ Links:
Check out Dawn’s website: https://practicebalance.com/
Connect with Dawn on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn
Sign up for my FREE Overcome Your Exhaustion Masterclass happening Jan 19th.
Join the Life After Medicine Facebook group
Apply for 1-1 Coaching
