Pride and Vanity
I am a doctor. What goes through your mind when you say that? How does that make you feel? What does that mean to you? And how has this gotten in the way of living your best life? As I have written before, I wholeheartedly believe that most of us who choose to go into medicine do so out of a desire to help others. This is a desire that arises out of love- love for others and love for making a difference. Intertwined with these selfless goals, however, we often find pride and vanity. It takes a lot of hard work and dedication to become a doctor: years and years of study, exorbitant costs for education, time lost with family and friends, and tremendous physical and emotional demands. For the average physician, medicine does not lead to as great financial gain as compared to other careers that require less time and sacrifice, and so we feel that, “at the very least”, we have a right to be proud of our accomplishment. I absolutely understand this, and I also see how it can get in the way of us reaching our greatest potential.
Let me provide a few examples:
Ex. 1: In the last couple of decades, medicine has become a business. It has slowly been taken from the hands of physicians and placed in the hands of large corporations. When this process first started physicians took a position of pride saying, “I’m a doctor. I take care of people. I don’t want to deal with anything else. I’ll let other people deal with the business aspect.” We thought ourselves and our roles “too important”. We allowed businesspeople to come into our places of work to run the nitty gritty boring things that we considered to be below us, believing that our value would be respected and acknowledged. And what has been the consequence? We now find ourselves stuck in mega-sized healthcare systems that utilize and move us like pawns. We have little to no decision-making ability over our day-to-day, and if we voice any discontent, we are quickly made to understand that we are easily replaceable.
Ex. 2: Our pride and vanity isolate us from the only other people in the world that truly understand what we live every day: each other. Due to our pride, we are often unwilling to share challenges, fears, and mistakes with our colleagues. We seek to appear all-knowing, confident, perfect. The thought of being seen less than is too much for our pride to handle.
Ex. 3: Currently many physicians are suffering from chronic levels of stress and symptoms of burnout. Yet, due to this misguided sense of pride, they refuse to seek support. They think, “I’m a doctor, I’m the one who helps people. I don’t need help. I can get through this by myself.” The result is that the burnout worsens, and we end up with either completely disengaged physicians who negatively impact their teams and patients, attrition, or in the most severe cases depression, substance abuse, and suicide.
So, what is there for us to do? First, we all need to consider where in our lives we allow pride and vanity to get in the way of considering other options and making better choices. Then, we need to contemplate what it might be like if we put our pride aside and embrace the idea that we are human before doctor. This will allow us to accept that connection is essential for our survival. Fully grasping this will give us permission to share with our colleagues, to show ourselves as we truly are, and to see them as they truly are. In building these connections we can create real accountability in our workplaces, and we can come together as one voice. This will empower us to come to terms with the fact that if we want to change the healthcare system, we must take it back from the hands of businesspeople. To do this, we must be willing to grow ourselves beyond “I’m a doctor” and learn how to build a business in a way that supports us and those whom we want to serve. And finally, letting go of our physician’s pride will open doors of opportunity. It will free us from a specific identity so that we can reach our greatest actualization, and when we feel we can’t reach that full potential alone, we will have the courage to ask for support in our journey.
So, as I leave you today, I simply ask you to consider: If you put all pride and vanity aside, what is possible for you? What could your life look like? How could this change how you show up for your life/interactions? And how could this change your relationships?
I struggle with pride. I am proud of what I do. But not vanity. I see people tearful at the edge of their ability to cope – with a sore throat. I’m on 4 meds and barely keeping my sanity, but I suffuse my needs to the sore throat. Every one and every thing comes before me and my needs. That’s where my burnout lurks. “When is it my turn to be coddled and cared for?” Still waiting.
I completely understand where you stand. This is the struggle for so many of us. We place anything and everything before our own needs. Throughout most of my career I could easily go 10-12 hours without eating, drinking, or even going to the bathroom because the needs of my patients, nurses, techs, consultants, students, etc were all before mine. This is a choice, however. It took being diagnosed with cancer and fearing that I would not be around to see my kids grow up to make me stop and see the reality. I was choosing to do that to myself. Obviously there were moments when there wasn’t a choice (ie coding patient), but for most other situations I could choose to say, I am going to take 5 minutes to go to the bathroom, drink something and take a bite of my sandwich. If we don’t care for ourselves, have compassion for ourselves it is impossible for us to have compassion for those that seek our help. And worst of all, it becomes impossible for us to unconditionally love the people that are most important to us. Where I see the vanity here, and I only say it because this is where I find it in myself, is in believing that we can continue to place the needs of everyone else before our own all the time and still be able to be all that we have the potential for being. We believe we are super-human, when in reality we are not.
I wonder if it is even possible to get through medical training, much less continue after without pride and vanity?
I don’t have any answers, but your questions were very well-posed, as always. Thanks Cecilia.