Love What You Do and Do What You Love

From the first day of medical school, the faculty preached an ideal concept of “balance.” It was delivered with the sympathetic belief that it would prepare my classmates and me for a field where a large amount of time would be spent working and studying. More importantly, preparing us for a field where suicide rates have been reported to be higher than the general population (1). It was during our first lecture on balance, unbeknownst to me, that we were all being set up for failure. The concept of balancing “work” and “life” was presented to us as an effortless task. Ideally, I should be able to balance the amount of time I spend doing work equally with the amount of time I spend doing something to improve my quality of life. For me, that would entail going for a hike or spending quality time with family and friends. There are two fundamental problems with this concept: first, in practice, it is not that easy; and second, it categorizes “work” to be the opposite of fun. As I graduated from medical school and endured one more speech about balance, I was left with the words, “don’t forget about the things you love to do.” These words, while at the time were considered to be negligible, have impacted my belief system deeply and have helped to shape my concept of balance. My view of “work–life balance” may be better appreciated after an understanding of my background and current status. I am a pediatric resident with plans of going into the field of Pediatric Critical Care Medicine. I strongly believe in the value of research and education and have several ongoing projects in addition to my residency clinical requirements and responsibilities. I often find myself pressed for time with barely a moment to contemplate what is work and what is life, never mind balancing the two. Despite all these, I have rarely felt the effects of physical and emotional burnout during my Critical Care rotations, or during residency as a whole. My co-residents do not necessarily share this sentiment. Goldhagen et al. mentions that elevated stress levels lead to burnout, and West et al. states that stress and fatigue lead to increased medical errors (2, 3). As I take a step back, it should not be a surprise that residents fear the field of Critical Care. The shared opinion among most residents is that their Critical Care rotation tends to be the most emotionally and physically trying rotation of their 3 years. As one resident bluntly said, “I avoid that wing like I would the plague.” It became apparent that the critical care rotation evoked deep seeded emotions for many of my colleagues. In order to determine the possible etiologies, I decided to send out an informal, openended survey to each resident. I received an overwhelming number of responses to consider. One resident insightfully wrote: