Thread by @tjwebbmd

@kidney_boy I'm the resident you're talking about here, sir; the very one. The one who stayed late, blew by duty hours, volunteered for the admission or the procedure; the one who covered his peers' shifts.

The thing you are missing is that I didn't make those choices, I had those choices.

@kidney_boy My spouse is an RN; we had talked this through together and had decided that's how those 3 years of residency were going to be for us. It was what we wanted, because we knew it was temporary and because I wanted every last ounce of training I could get out of those years.

@kidney_boy It was hard, but she chose to stay home so that I could do that, and I couldn't have if she hadn't been paying the bills, managing our meager finances, caring for our children, fixing our house, and creating insane amounts of margin for me to be able to be that kind of resident.

@kidney_boy And that's how I was as a 3rd year med student too.

But when my daughter was born during 4th year and my spouse was still working, I started leaving my rotations at 5 to go home and help. And when she went back to work at 3 months, I stopped working weekends to stay home.

@kidney_boy And when I finished residency and my hospital didn't follow through on finding night call coverage for me, I left and found another job; I was tired of not being able to take my kids to gymnastics or go see a movie with my spouse because I had to watch my cell phone at all times.

@kidney_boy In residency I had peers who were couples matched, or had SO's that weren't from the medical world and expected some degree of normalcy in their family life during those three years, or who had other community and service commitments - callings- outside of medicine.

@kidney_boy I had peers who were single and building networks of community, and had already sacrificed their 20's and had decided that they were allowed to live their life and do residency too.

And I had peers in exactly the same life circumstances as myself who found a different balance.

@kidney_boy And the reality is that I would take myself and my children to see each and every one of them today; they are amazing physicians. They haven't sacrificed less and they aren't less committed because I worked an extra, what, 50-100 hours than them over the course of 3 years?

@kidney_boy What is that, a week and a half in residency time? And considering the reality that I started out behind most of them in my medical knowledge and clinical skill, I'm just glad I had the privilege required to catch up a little.

@kidney_boy Medicine requires sacrifices; I've yet to meet the doctor who hasn't made those sacrifices. It looks different for everyone. As people on this thread have pointed out, it looks different for nursing parents, folks caring for ill parents, for people struggling with poverty.

@kidney_boy And it looks different for each and every one of us as we engage in the dynamic process of deciding what is best for our mental, physical, social, and spiritual health, and how all of that is balanced and mutually reinforced and supported with our calling of practicing medicine.

@kidney_boy But God forbid I judge someone because I stayed till 7 and they needed to leave at 5:30, when we both got there at 4 am. I'm just glad we got to do this work together for 12 and 1/2 hours. That's what really prevents burnout; mutual support of peers who see and honor one another.