When I Grow Up - Mind Medicine

In growing up, I think it is naïve to say “I want to be this.” Because what “this” is, is not simply a job, it is a set of values, a lifestyle, it is what you will spend ninety percent of your waking hours working in, it is a way of thinking and a way of being. Therefore “I want to be this” has it the wrong way around. Instead, decide what is important to you, and then find a “this”, it will afford you these priorities.

For example, the values I hold dear are; to be well informed in my work life and being able to utilise that knowledge to good effect in an independent manner, I want to have the capacity for personal growth that does not cease as I gain mastery of various skills and knowledge bases, I want to be able to contribute in a meaningful way to peoples’ lives and to society at large. I want to be able to achieve these values without the need to degrade myself or be beholden to another person, to be able to exercise my own will and intellect without concern for coming into conflict with another person’s agenda. To these ends and more, I want to practice medicine.

Medical practitioners are not, however a homogenous group in terms of work life. As such, it is important to consider other facets when deciding what you want to be when you grow up. I want the income to be able to do what I want and to not feel the strain of financial stress. To this end, general practitioners are under-paid and under-appreciated for the tireless work they do. Conversely, in exchange for fabulous wealth, the surgeon must develop a single-minded, ruthless focus in an environment of intense competition with peers, often sacrificing much of the time they would otherwise spend on themselves.  

Fortuitously tragic, if there were to come a day when people no longer become ill and no longer need doctors, I do not believe it will come in this lifetime. Thus a lifetime of job security is guaranteed.

An important paradigm to decide on early is to-live-to-work or to-work-to-live. A great deal of people derive their primary satisfaction in life through their employment, earnestly seeking to further their careers to achieve success. This is not my feeling, I consider employment a means to an end, to achieve the other things that I enjoy in life. Therefore in a conflict between publish-or-perish research heavy hospital occupations and the independence of private practice, I will do the latter.

Finally, what must be considered is the people you will be working with. In medicine, this will be your patient population. In my mind there are three dichotomies in the doctor-patient interaction. There is the surgical acute problem that is identified and solved before you have learn much about the patient as a person, there is the complex medical patient who fills you with doubt and challenges you with their interactive problems, and there is the long term medicine of the general practice patient where you are afforded the privilege to know a patient throughout their life.

Some patients may be more disenfranchised than others, stigmatised or isolated from their peers and society. For instance, an individual with HIV may need more support from their medical practitioner. It is a matter of where you believe your efforts would be of most use.

For me, on some though, I considered the values above. I feel that these could be found anywhere in medicine. Financial reward will inevitably be better in one of the specialties and so I choose against general practice. The life of the physician or surgeon is one of large time commitments and the requirement for a strong academic, professional and live-to-work drive, but is also subject to the powers-that-be of the hospital and state health legislature, to this end I consider private practice in a peri-hospitalisation field. I hope to help those people disenfranchised by society and other facets of the healthcare system that will also benefit from what I consider to be my strengths.

To these ends and some others, I seek to become a psychiatrist, in the hope that I can do good and live a fulfilling life.