Motherhood, Laid Bare on the Surgery Floor
Looking back now, 19 years later, all I want to do is find that woman and hold her. She was doing everything. Everything. She was showing up to a system that had no language for what she was carrying, no structure to hold it, no curiosity about what it costs to return to a demanding clinical role while your body and your identity are still in the process of reorganising themselves. She was not failing. She was surviving something that was never designed with her in mind.
The systemic lack of compassion - from the culture to the individuals I worked with — is still astounding. And yet I know through listening to hundreds of other women doctors’ experience, that sadly it isn't unusual. I know it's not even close to the worst of it. This is the water we swim in. That's what makes it so insidious. The shame lands on the individual woman. The system stays intact.
The story we tell about doctors who leave. What if burnout Isn’t the whole picture?
There's a common assumption whenever a doctor steps away from clinical medicine: that they must have burned out. It's the explanation people reach for first, rather than asking whether it's actually true. I understand why. It's the story we hear most, and it fits with the current narrative that everyone is leaving.
It's also, I've noticed, the angle people are often keenest to pursue when I've been approached to share my story — journalists, podcast hosts, people writing about doctors leaving medicine. Burnout makes for a more clickable headline than "I found something I wanted to do more." I understand why it's the angle others want. I'm just not willing to force my story into that mould, just because it's the one that gets more attention.
Because that's not my story.