Privacy

I was chatting with a colleague at a birthday party the other day. This physician said something interesting. His wife added to it. They mentioned how he does not list his telephone number in the phonebook. He tries to avoid going to the grocery store at peak hours. He chided his wife because she bought some tobacco at the checkout counter. She was buying it because someone had suggested putting it around her plants to make them grow better. She wanted to try that out. He was afraid of being recognized and what people might think.

As I finish my second year in practice after residency, I am beginning to understand. Being a doctor is a 'full-time' job. It is however, more than that. One's patients view one as someone with whom they can share their suffering, pain, fears, depression and the medical problems that may be the cause of the result. Often, people are inclined to run a medical problem by you. Family and friends count on you as their go-to person for medical problems. Even if they don't, as a medical profesional, one feels obliged to pitch in and help. Slowly, one's identity in the eyes of many merges with one's profession of being a physician.

As a person, one may want to protect some time 'away' from this identity. As a medical student and resident, I often wanted to be known as a doctor in public so I could help if it was needed. I often wondered why older physicians tended to be more discrete about their identity as doctors. I misinterpreted this as their unwillingness to step up to the plate and help if needed. I now know that this is not true. I have seen doctors quietly come forward and do what needs to be done. I guess I understand now that sometimes a doctor wants to just be a regular person and not feel the weight of being the reliever of suffering or the sympathetic listener or the ...doctor. Most physicians struggle with guilt, as it is, that they are not doing enough for their patients or they are not sympathetic or empathetic enough. So this is difficult to talk about. It is an internal conflict between the desire to be there and make a difference and the need for recharging one's own reserves. I think this is why doctors are private people. My number is still in the phone book.