Medicine calling. Sorry, wrong number

Sir William Osler is often cited as someone who popularized medicine as a "calling". Now, amid all things COVID, doctors and other healthcare professionals are debating that notion. For many, it was just a job and they are leaving medicine to do something else.

There’s a question dividing the medical practice right now: Is being a doctor a job, or a calling?

For decades, the answer was clear. Doctors accepted long hours and punishing schedules, believing it was their duty to sacrifice in the name of patient care. They did it knowing their colleagues prided themselves on doing the same. A newer generation of physicians is questioning that culture, at times to the chagrin of their older peers.

There are many definitions of a calling. Here are some examples.

I did not see medicine as a calling, but rather a choice which, fortunately, turned out to be the right one for me. Like every choice, we buy emotionally and justify it rationally. Mine was not a spiritual one. It was not a long-distance call on a burner phone without caller ID or a telemarketer blocking app.

But seeing medicine as a calling comes with some potential hazards:

1. The hazards of defining yourself by what you do
2. Tolerating conditions that you should not tolerate
3. Making sacrifices you should not make
4. Thinking that if you do not see patients, but rather pursue a non-clinical career that still helps patients, you are not a "real doctor"
5. Becoming a part of the dark underbelly of medicine
6. Wearing the golden handcuffs too long
7. Committing to a lifetime occupation that you cannot understand until you actually do it
8. Thinking you are exceptional

9.Believing the myth of the meritocracy

10. Becoming part of the problem

What’s burning out health care workers is less the grueling conditions we practice under, and more our dwindling faith in the systems for which we work. What has been identified as occupational burnout is a symptom of a deeper collapse. We are witnessing the slow death of American medical ideology.

Today's medical students have a different persona than me when I started medical school. Other issues, like work-life balance, take priority. We need to accommodate their needs and wants and even offer them an exit ramp so we don't lose them to another occupation.

These days, there are so many robocalls, I don't answer my phone when it's a number I don't recognize or is not in my contact list. There is a moral to that story. Just because someone is calling doesn't mean you should pick up the phone.

Arlen Meyers, MD, MBA is the President and CEO of the Society of Physician Entrepreneurs on Substack and Editor of Digital Health Entrepreneurship