What It Takes to Be a Doctor by Ranjana Srivastava

Author:Ranjana Srivastava
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Australia

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Is being a doctor more stressful than other professions?

‘Joy, temperance, and repose slam the door on the doctor’s nose.’

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I think about this often, especially when I am feeling overwhelmed and lament that I should know to cope better. After all, it’s not easy running a small business, being a policeman, paramedic, teacher or social worker. Parents who stay home to care for young children and sick, disabled adults face constant stress too. It turns out that in modern life stress is everywhere. You are stressed if you are unemployed or inadequately employed and you are stressed if you have a good job and steady income.

But it is well documented that the rates of stress and the consequences of unmanaged stress, ranging from rates of alcohol and drug misuse to mental illness and self-harm, are higher in medical professionals compared to other professionals. Why is that? Shouldn’t a privileged job, respect from society and a good income be protective? Having spoken to many different professionals about this, I can identify one key element. Doctors who carry the weight of human life in their hands day after day shoulder an altogether different responsibility.

A friend of mine is a much-loved GP. He tells me that, while he loves his work, he is always stressed about the lack of time to devote to his patients. He feels bad wrapping up a consultation when there are obvious issues that cannot be dealt with in ten or fifteen minutes. But he is also mindful of the people in the waiting room who have pressing issues. He regularly goes home ruminating over his patients, what he could have done better and whether he missed something. Sometimes he worries about missing a life-threatening diagnosis, which could ruin his practice but mostly he rues, he is troubled by his own conscience.

I identify with this. Every day at work, I meet people who are very sick. They come to me with high expectations and hope that I will treat their illness and make them feel better again. They hang on to my every word, structure their day around our appointment and dissect my words and expressions long after I have left. When people are in hospital, they will skip going to the bathroom or having a shower in case they miss seeing the doctor. Outside of hospital, they plan holidays and reunions around major medical events. Even when there is no good medical treatment, patients cling to the hope that their doctor will come up with something. They are not misguided, rather they are being human.

This is when you realise that there are very few binary choices in medicine, where you can say yes or no. Everything depends on the patient and the context. A treatment that is futile for one person may be life-saving for another. Advice that is shunned by one patient turns out to be another patient’s salvation. A procedure that you are new to is the one you need in an emergency; ideally, you

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