Things I Re-Learned on Vacation
Colors, vitamin D, and life balance lessons from a week in Belize
As I write to you, dear readers, two feet of snow is being added to the top of 1.5 feet of snow still frozen and waiting on the sidewalks in Boston. Despite this, my energy is buoyant after spending a week in Placencia, Belize (yes, even despite it taking 36 hours to get there instead of the planned 6). As snow and ice are thrown repeatedly at my window by the current bombogenesis blizzard (whatever that means), I thought sharing some of my favorite photos and what I hope to bring from my retreat to the warmth might be the best way to savor my trip.
New Brick Use Unlocked: When I’m off the clock, I am OFF the clock.
As a fellow (aka I’ve been in training in psychiatry for ten years…1 more after this year to go), a common expectation of medicine that we have inherited is the idea of being on 24/7. There are times I am on call over night and on weekends, or when I am on service in the hospital, and those are not the times I’m talking about. Healthcare is predicated (as many jobs are) on an old system that presumed physicians were men with wives and a level of privilege. They had someone at home to do the work of “making” a home and life, and therefore their focus could be on career. Some of the burn out we struggle with now in healthcare is that there remains vestiges of the old version of medicine where there was not constant documentation, 24/7 ability for people to contact you multiple ways, and where your main focus was on the hospital.
When writing this out, it’s clear that this leads to burn out. Healthcare is not the only place where this is true (looking at you, too, teachers…), but it is the field I’m in. As I’ve transitioned from residency to fellowship, I brought habits that were sustainable in my prior clinics/hospital, but that are more burn-out inducing in my current phase of training. In prior years, when I was on vacation, I would have someone cover my inbox (email and the patient message box), but I would still check or be reachable. This past week, I actually signed out and trusted the other person to cover, and did not check my email. I let things wait, and nothing burned down in my planned absence.