Category: General Medicine

We have a word for somebody who goes to Medical school, becomes a Doctor, and then goes on to establish a career as a specialist.

In fact, we have lots of words for each stage of this journey.

Pre-med, Undergraduate, Post-graduate, Intern, Resident, SHO, FY1, Registrar, Consultant, Professor…

But what if you choose to follow a non-traditional Medicine-related path?

What if you choose not to practise Cynical Clinical Medicine?

If you dare to do anything than the “normal path”, then Medicine had no words for you.

Actually, that’s not true. Medicine has plenty of words for you.

Words like:

• Shame…
• What a waste…
• Failure…
• Drop-out…
• Weak…
• Uncommitted…
• Had such potential…

But the truth of the matter is that there are many ways to play the game of Medicine (yes, it’s a game)…more ways than the gatekeepers would have you believe.

There are many different experiences and expressions of Medicine that have nothing to do with working in a hospital or even having a medical degree.

You can meet some of these expressions of Medicine at these brilliant podcasts and websites:

• Docs Outside The Box
• The Hippocratic Hustle
• Medic Footprints
• Other Options For Doctors

Because of this diversity, we need a bigger, more useful vocabulary to describe all the various options and possibilities when it comes to Medicine.

There are Medics who have dropped out of Medical School completely in order to practice helping people in other arenas. (Explorers)

There are Medics who leave Medicine without a degree because of an adverse reaction to their specific learning and working environment. (Houdinis)

There are Medics who have completed their degrees and leveraged the current prestige and esteem of their title to open doors in Hollywood, Silicon Valley and government. (Docpreneurs)

There are Medics who go to school to make their parents happy and fulfil their family obligation. (Obligates)

These aren’t necessarily the best names, and this isn’t a comprehensive list of all the different permutations in Medicine.

But one word/label that I hope we can embrace, regardless of our specific Medical journey, is this:

Medic.

And the definition for Medic is one that I’ve stolen borrowed and remixed from Seth Godin’s important book Linchpin.

Medic – an individual who can walk into chaos and create order, someone who can invent, connect, create, heal and make things happen.”

Whether you graduated from Medical school or not, you’re a Medic.

If you grew up under the expectations of family and friends who always wanted you to be a Doctor, you’re a Medic.

Whether you’ve been labelled a Doctor, Nurse, Dentist, Lab technician, Hospital janitor, records administrator…

You are a Medic,

an individual who can walk into chaos and create order, someone who can invent, connect, create, heal and make things happen.”

You are a Medic, a linchpin, a vital member of our community with gifts and ideas that the world needs to experience.

No matter what your experience, and regardless of how much shame and guilt has been heaped on you…you are part of a family of Medics.

We love you and believe in you.

Welcome to the family…now go and be a Medic.

Image: Gapingvoid

You’re not here to have a mortgage.

You’re not here to take on and pay student loans.

You’re not here to be stressed by your line manager.

You’re not here to fit into a job description.

You’re not here to “get with the program”.

You’re not even here to take care of your patients…that’s simply a possible by-product.

You’re here to change the world.

You’re here to make a ruckus.

You’re here to do something worth telling a story to your great great grandkids about.

You’re here to birth your ideas and dreams into reality.

You don’t need to know how. You just need to remember why you’re here, and allow that reason to affect everything you do.

Image: Gapingvoid

If you’ve stopped being idealistic, hopeful, optimistically inventive, joyfully curious in how you engage with each day…and are now hardened, disillusioned, disenchanted, sardonic and pessimistic…

…then maybe your Clinical Medicine practice has mutated into Cynical Medicine.

And as with all malignant mutations, it doesn’t matter whose “fault” it is, or even how scary it is to be told about it.

What matters is taking immediate action to keep the malignancy from spreading further.

Chemotherapy, radiotherapy, surgical intervention…no matter how exacting or brutal the treatment regimen, it’s a bargain if it saves a life.

So if you’ve found yourself practising Cynical Medicine, it’s time you loved Patient #1 (i.e you) enough to take the necessary steps to save the life of your dreams and untapped potential.

Image: Gapingvoid

That’s what Seth keeps encouraging us to do.

That’s what Chriss reminded us to do in pursuing the extra mile.

But what does it mean to “make a ruckus”?

Ruckus:

1. A noisy fight or disturbance.
2. A state or situation in which many people are angry or upset
3. “Work that matters for people who care.” – Seth Godin

If it’s worth doing, then it’s worth making many people angry or upset.

If it’s worth doing, then it will be making many people angry or upset.

You’ve been trained to be a placid sheep, timidly following instructions.

And the goal of this training is to make you easy to control and manipulate with guilt, greed, debt and the neediness of others.

The trick is to do the opposite and remember that you weren’t put on this earth to make a living…you were put here to make a ruckus.

You are incredibly smart, passionate and full of gifts and talents that transcend any of the job descriptions and categories that you’re being presented with.

Don’t try to fit yourself into the boxes available.

Pursue the parts of you that are “outside of the box” and allow them to create new doors for you to walk through.

They don’t want you to do that.

They are afraid of what will happen when you do.

They are afraid of you changing because that will become an indictment against their refusal to dig their talents out of the sand and share them with the world.

They will get angry with you for doing anything – big or small – that doesn’t fit in with what they expect.

They’ll judge you for taking time to look after your health, or making a phone call that goes beyond your job description.

They’ll label you a trouble maker, unprofessional…anything to get you to quieten down and get back in line.

But remember, you weren’t put here to be quiet. You were put here to make a ruckus.

Work worth doing is work worth making a few people angry and upset over.

And a good day is one where you caused a noisy fight or disturbance on behalf of doing something that matters.

Image: Gapingvoid

When a Doctor chooses to share or use what she knows when caring for her patients, we call her “clinically competent”, a good Doctor, and give her a round of applause.

But when that same Doctor dares to use what she knows to care for herself…patient #1…we call her selfish, “weak” and give her heaps of guilt and condemnation.

And the excuse for this behaviour is: well, that’s the life you signed up for in Medicine. That’s life as a Doctor.

This isn’t what you signed up for. And even if we’re in a bad place right now, that doesn’t mean we have to stay there.

We can choose to make things better.

We can choose to “show them our secret.”

We can choose to get more sleep.

We can choose to love ourselves.

We can choose to respect ourselves

We can choose to leave toxic work environments and corrosive relationships.

We can choose to seek out positive work environments and up building relationships.

We can choose to spend more time with our family and loved ones.

We can choose to back away from the ledge and reject the shame that scares us from seeking help.

We can choose to get more sleep.

We can choose to make more money.

We can choose to have money work for us.

We can choose to reinvent ourselves.

We can choose to figure out who we really are and “do that on purpose”.

We can choose to be defined by more than our job title or the sacrifices our parents made to put us through medical school.

We can choose to ignore sunk costs.

We can choose to avoid death bed regrets by “choosing to avoid daily bedtime regrets.”

We can choose to eat healthily.

We can choose to travel the world.

We can choose to make a dent in the Universe.

We can choose to spend our 120,000 hours differently.

We can choose to practice our chosen profession differently.

We can choose to practice a different profession differently.

We can choose to be joyful.

We can choose to be silly.

We can choose to be powerful.

We can choose to be intentional.

We can choose to change our minds.

We can choose to think like an entrepreneur.

We can choose to try something different.

We can choose to be in the spotlight.

We can choose to step away from the spotlight.

We can choose to level up.

We can choose to start over.

We can choose to dance with the things we’re afraid of.

We can choose to pursue a life of meaning rather than be chained by the trappings of “success”.

We can choose…to share the intimidating brilliance of the spark we each carry.

We can choose to share our spark, and let the world deal with the consequences of our unique brilliance.

After all, that’s what we desperately want for our patients.

But no matter how much we tell them what they should do, they’re only going to get it when they see us lead by example.

Patient: Where’s Doctor Susan?

Hospital: She quit last month to go start a vegan restaurant downtown.

The greatest act of service that you can do for your patients…and the world at large…is to dare to share your spark in all its fullness.

And even though your status quo doesn’t want you to, you still need to share it.

That’s what you were born to do.

Image: Gapingvoid

Dr Ignaz Semmelweiss was thrown into a mental asylum for telling Doctors to wash their hands.

Now, children in primary school sing: “Coughs and sneezes spread diseases”.

A computer used to be an expensive, sophisticated artifice the size of a house, with the power of a basic calculator and maintained by an army of grown-ups.

Now, parents toss mini-sized supercomputers (iPads) at their toddlers just to shut them up.

Neurosurgery used to be the serious domain of highly skilled multi-lettered Consultants wielding expensively equipped surgical theatres.

Today, or maybe tomorrow, it will simply be a level in a videogame played by millions of kids around the world, where the movement of the players guides nanorobots who carry out the real-world surgery.

Today’s “serious grown-up issues” are tomorrow’s Child’s play.

Joy, wonder, play and creativity always win against fearfully hiding behind the excuse of “being a Grown-Up”.

We’re just kids (to borrow from Patti Smith). Kids with the privilege of taking on and engaging with more opportunities for impact (aka “responsibilities”).

Child’s Play endures and supplants everything that isn’t Child’s Play.

So skip the misery bit of “being a responsible Grown-Up”…and dare to use your talents and gifts to create art that impacts the world…but feels like Child’s Play to you.

Image: Gapingvoid