NEPA Vital Signs - Summer Fall 2017 - 26

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FAMILY PERSPECTIVE

Most doctors jobs don't end when they step out of the office. Many take their
work home with them, physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. Here's
the Family Perspective from some local doctors' spouses and children.

am the son of a primary care physician
and husband to a Physician Assistant
in an Internal Medicine practice. I have
had a close-up view of the family life of a
healthcare provider throughout my life.
You would think that medicine was a popular topic around the dinner table growing
up, but honestly the head of the table was
absent at dinner time more often than not.
Those conversations would have been boring after The Health Insurance Portability
and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA)
anyway! In the days when a graduating
resident would move back to his/her hometown to hang a shingle and open a practice,
the evening hours were often spent doing
rounds at the hospital and making house
calls. If patients neglected to call the office
before 5pm or did not receive an immediate
response to a page, often times they would
just show up at our house and wait! If only
I knew what I know now, I would have
been sitting on the front porch collecting
co-pays at my homemade lemonade stand.

hen I look back at why I decided
to apply to medical school, I'm
not sure if I did it because I am
the daughter of a physician, or despite the
fact that I am the daughter of a physician.
It is difficult to explain to the uninitiated
just how thoroughly medicine saturates
physicians' lives: how, even on days off,
conversation is full of interesting patient
presentations, stories of emergency situations, and the omnipresent beeping of
work pagers. I grew up spending afternoons
talking to my father's patients in his office

Fortunately for many, house calls are mostly
a thing of the past. However, healthcare
providers will always bring their work
home with them, whether it is emotional,
physical, or often both. It is inevitable. It
is not uncommon for a physician's kitchen
table to be transformed into a desk nightly
thanks to the world of Electronic Medical
Records. I would elaborate on EMR, but I
am working under a maximum word count.
Consider yourself fortunate.

pay me enough to bear this burden. How
much is enough to compensate physicians
for this workload? See: word count.
The life of a physician is much more difficult and stressful than it may seem. Medicine
is not an occupation, it is a vocation. Many
sacrifices are made by individuals and their
families in the service of others. I am proud
to say that serving others without hesitation
is among the core values of my childhood
and I couldn't be happier to pass that along
to my children. I cannot speak for all of my
siblings, but I think it is important to note
that six of us are of working age and four
are working in healthcare in some capacity,
myself included. We were all smart enough
to avoid medical school, but the service of
others instilled in us at a young age lead
to an obvious choice as we sought out a
rewarding career path.

As I watched my dad work tirelessly
throughout his career, I knew for sure
that I was not going to be a doctor when
I grew up. That was later confirmed by a
Professor in a Biology for Non-majors class
at the University of Scranton. The life of
a healthcare provider always seemed so
stressful and exhausting. The number of
friends and family members relying on you
for their physical and mental wellbeing is
overwhelming. I feel even more strongly
about that today, honestly. You could not WILLIAM DEMPSEY III, MBA
and being stopped by them in the grocery
store so they could thank him for saving
the lives of their fathers, grandmothers,
and children. After seeing him touch the
lives of so many people so profoundly, how
could I not want to follow in his footsteps?

long before I filled out any applications. Worklife balance is a struggle for every physician,
and I hope to learn from my father's successes
and mistakes and to one day have a family
who loves me through the incessant beeping
of my work phone. Maybe, if I am very lucky,
I will have a child who becomes a physician
Of course, along with the grateful patients because of (or despite of) me.
come the 3 AM phone calls, the demanding
hours, and the difficult patients that make
KATIE NEALON is a 2015 graduate of Colgate
doctors regret for a minute (or an hour, or a University
and just completed her second year at
day) that they chose their profession. I under- GCSoM. She is interested in pursuing a career in
stood the less glamorous parts of medicine Obstetrics and Gynecology."
N E PA

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of NEPA Vital Signs - Summer Fall 2017