The Dark Side of Being a Doctor: Breaking the Silence on a Toxic Healthcare System

Have you ever cried in the bathroom at work? In residency- we all had our “fav places to cry” around the hospital.

But here’s the thing- that’s not normal. Or at least- it shouldn’t be.

In this episode, we go into the “dark side” of toxic medical culture.

You’ll discover:

• real-life stories of toxic behavior, which can help you recognize what is NOT ok.
• that you are absolutely NOT alone.
• your worth and your rights as a healthcare professional- and how you should be treated at work.

You deserve to be in a work environment that RESPECTS you and values your contributions.

So if you want to feel empowered you to advocate for a healthier, more supportive work environment for yourself- click play now.

Be a part of a community of like minded healthcare professionals, come join the Life After Medicine FB group so you can feel validated and supported. 

You are not alone!

Life After Medicine explores doctors' journey of finding purpose beyond their medical careers, addressing physician burnout, career changes, opportunities in non-clinical jobs for physicians and remote jobs within the healthcare system without being burned out, using medical training.

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Life After Medicine explores doctors' journey of finding purpose beyond their medical careers, addressing physician burnout, career changes, opportunities in non-clinical jobs for physicians and remote jobs within the healthcare system without being burned out, using medical training.

Transcript

Chelsea: 0:00

This episode will empower you to advocate for creating a healthier, more supportive work environment for it yourself. Welcome to Life After Medicine, the podcast helping millennial health professionals leave the system, find their purpose, and turn it into their paycheck. I'm your host, Chelsea Terjan. In 2019, I quit my OBGYN residency. I had this gut feeling there was something more for me than 15 minute patient visits under fluorescent lights. Now, I'm a six figure entrepreneur, podcaster, and career coach. I get to do work I love. On my own terms, all while traveling the world. My mission is to help you follow your pull towards something more so you can find work you enjoy that doesn't burn you out. Don't worry. It's not a pipe dream. I'm here to show you exactly how it's done. When you listened to this episode, you will hear real life examples of toxic behavior in the workplace, which can help you recognize similar patterns in your own experience. It will help you feel validated and reassured that you're not alone. And it'll also help you recognize your worth. And your rights as a health professional and empower you to seek environments that respect you and value your contribution. I want to start this with a story. There's these two young fish swimming along and they happened to meet an older fish swimming the other way. Who nods at them and says, morning boys, how's the water. And the two young fish swim on for a bit. And then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes. What the hell is water? So, this is a story that was initially shared by David Foster Wallace and his 2005 commencement speech at Kenyon college. A fish doesn't really have a concept of water because they're just swimming in it. It just is water is, is just what's around them. And essentially it's this idea that we can be so immersed in a particular environment. That we don't recognize like how pervasive its influences, because it just seems normal. It just seems like this is the way it is. And that's what I want to talk about in this episode. I want to use this episode to shine a light on the dark side of medicine. To talk about behaviors and customs and things that regularly occur within the healthcare system that are actually not normal or okay. And you may not know that they're not normal or okay. Because you've never worked anywhere else besides the hospital. I know I didn't or because most of your friends are in medicine and so your world is small and you're just so deeply entrenched in this medical culture. That you don't understand in a real way, you might feel like, oh, this is a little not okay, but you may not realize how toxic and how not. Okay. It is. And just to be clear, the purpose of this episode. Is not to complain or vent. I'm not here to just voice my dirty laundry and I'm not here to cast blame either because I don't believe that like certain people are villains within the healthcare system. I really do think that everyone is just doing the best they can to survive. Within the toxic system. And also I was a part of this, like, I'm not just a victim here. When I talk about these stories, like I participated in this too. Because that's what happens. When you're in this. Toxic system and this on modern family, how she says a doggy dog world, instead of dog eat dog. When you're in the doggy dog world. You become the thing you hate, you become a person you don't want to be because you're just trying to survive. And I get that, that happens. The way that we kind of morph into, into things to survive and to win in systems. That don't allow the best of us to shine. And the whole purpose of this episode is just to let you know. That this behavior is actually not okay. So that we can help to validate your experience. And break the cycle of the low key and sometimes high-key abuse and toxicity and empower you to know your worth and advocate for change. I'm going to start with my own stories, but I also want to open the floor to hear your stories. So if you have experiences that you want to share, please send me an email. Hello at coach Chels, md.com. And we can use this platform to share your experiences of the dark sides of medicine. Because I think the more we all speak up about. What's happening. The more we can stop it. Even the experience of trying to recall these memories was very confronting. I realized I had suppressed a lot of pieces. Of my time in medicine. And so I was sitting at a cafe trying to type this up and like had to close my eyes and almost like try to open my brain and tell myself like, it's okay. We can open up to these memories. It felt like I was sort of uncorking this bottle that was like, oh man, what am I going to, what's going to happen when I let this out. Just allowing myself to recall these, I realized how much I probably had suppressed so there's, there's some vague memories I have, um, where it was just really normal to be scared to call a consult. Because they might yell at you, they might be rude or short with you on the phone. And we just felt like, oh, we have to be on eggshells for certain people. It was also normal to be yelled at in the, or. It was normal to use phrases like my attending wrecked me, or I got wrecked. And essentially, I mean, when you look at it, that means some version of verbal abuse. Right. It was also normal to cry in the bathroom, um, to have a certain area. We ha I think we all had like, oh, where's your favorite place in the hospital to cry? to witness other people crying. I remember, um, talking about, oh man, this intern, she was crying in her car. We kind of stopped at, at stoplight next to her and I saw her crying and. Things like that were normal, essentially, just to be falling apart all over the hospital. So those are some vague memories I have, but I also want to go into some specific instances and memories from my time. Working in the hospital. One of my senior residents during intern year. I don't remember the context. But at some point he told us. You're either in the hospital or you're in the hospital. So basically he's saying like, you don't get to take a sick day. You don't get to like stay home. If you've got a cold, if you feel sick. You have to come into the hospital to work, unless you're so sick that you're literally hospitalized. And that's just such a fucked up message. Because the subtext of that is essentially. Like you don't matter. Your health and your wellbeing. Really don't matter. Like we don't care about you as a person. We care about your ability to show up. And to produce for us. We care about what you can do for us. We don't care about you. That's what that means. And then what that starts to teach us is like, I don't care about me. Like, oh, they don't think, I matter. I must not matter. My health and wellbeing don't matter. We there's times where we had, you know, residents who have migraines and then they're just like calling the pharmacy and being like, Hey, can you send me up something so I can take this for my migraine? And we're all just like medicating and. Band-aiding and covering up our symptoms so that we can just keep showing up for another shift. if you're not well, How can you help anyone else be well? We don't think about that. Another story. There was this one attending in particular who had this reputation of, she did not want to talk to interns, right. Because there's this hierarchy that exists within the medical system so I remember one time I was on labor and delivery on the day shift and I needed to sign out a patient that I was looking after and triaged because I had gotten them to a certain point, but there was still a bit of a workup that needed to be done before they weren't ready to be discharged yet. And so to sign out. You need an attending to sign off on your plan. And so usually I would run the plan by my third and fourth year, but they were all doing their own like upper level. Sign-out. And so instead I took my plan and I went to the attending doctor J. And I just started doing my presentation and I started kind of telling the workup that we'd done and like the plan and what we were waiting for. And at first, she's not even looking at me. She won't even turn away from her computer screen to look at me. And then she does. She looks at me. And she's just blinking her eyes. And she has a confused look on her face. And then she literally just says, why are you talking to me? As if I was the scum of the earth and how dare I Dane, to talk to her. Instead of me being this hardworking colleague. I had been there busting my ass for the last 12 hours taking care of patients. And I was trying to communicate with her so that she could help me take care of a patient. And aren't we supposed to be on the same team. But no. Because of, there was this hierarchy. She didn't even want to give me the time of day. Her response was literally, why are you talking to me? And the thing is. The level of like rudeness and dehumanization didn't even bother me at the time. It didn't bother me from like a moral standpoint of like, oh my gosh, how dare she treat me like that? I'm a human being I deserve better than that. I didn't even. Care about that because I was so used to that kind of treatment. I honestly was just frustrated. That I had to wait. So essentially what that means is she, she refused to like, hear my presentation. Um, she only wanted to hear it from a third or fourth year. And so what that meant was I had to wait until my third and fourth years got out of sign out. Then I, not the patient to them and B, because she wouldn't talk to me or listen to me at all. It just took like a whole nother hour before I could get home that night. And so then I would just like, I had to miss my yoga class, like it just delayed everything and I was more. Annoyed about sort of the time that that took. But really. I mean, when I think about it now, it's like, oh my gosh, people talk to me that way. We talked to each other that way we, we treated each other like complete crap and people are still doing this in medicine. And there's just like this dehumanization that occurs and the way we treat each other, the environment that's created, it hardens us. It depletes our empathy even more. And it's not, I'm not saying any one person within the healthcare system is the villain because we're also treated really like everyone collectively is treated so poorly by administration as well. But this water. It's so toxic. And we don't see it because we're just swimming in it. And so these are just a few examples. They're not even that bad to be like, they're not great. But they're not that bad. They're pretty benign compared to stories I've heard from clients and messages I've received online. My personal stories are pretty mild compared to those, which is horrible. Because the thing is you deserve to feel valued and respected. As a human being in your workplace, you deserve to be in a workplace that cares about your health, your wellbeing. Your happiness. I would love to continue to open up. The conversation around things that are not okay to experience. So. If you want to. Share your stories. Like I said, please send me an email. Hello at coach Chels, mte.com. Be happy to share your story anonymously or otherwise. and if you want to be part of a community of like-minded healthcare professionals who help support each other and lift each other up and encourage each other To stand up for their worth. And come join the life after medicine, Facebook, community, so that you can feel validated and supported. And like you were not alone. Because you're not. Shame just keeps us silent and siloed. But you're not alone.