I've been through a bumpy ride professionally the past several months, and last week my colleague and I were on the verge of giving notice and looking for greener pastures, but a certain amount of ingenuity and iron nerve (mine) and a large amount of diplomacy (his) managed to save the situation, at least temporarily. I would say "phew" except I don't really feel relieved. Practicing medicine is difficult, but making a living, holding down a job, keeping one's foot firmly planted in the realm of acceptable working conditions is even more so.
We hospitalists are a peripatetic lot; apparently a quarter of us plan to change jobs within the next two years. It's easier to contemplate job change when you're a hospitalist, compared to someone in private practice, for instance, but I know a lot of primary care doctors who have been moving around, changing jobs, changing roles, all in an effort to find a decent balance between job satisfaction and an adequate salary. It seems medicine is evolving in the same way American industry has: away from the ideal of spending one's entire career at one organization, toward job change, mobility, uncertainty.
During my recent week of negotiation and back-room intelligence-gathering, I thought about Dr. Santell a lot. He had a low tolerance for bureaucracy, and I would like to believe he'd be on my side, but I don't know how he'd feel about the prospect of me giving notice and changing jobs. He spent almost forty years at the same medical center, showing up to work seven days a week, fifty weeks out of the year.
Not that he didn't consider leaving. One of the most popular stories about Dr. Santell had to do with his almost-retirement. Several years before I arrived at my residency hospital, he surprised everyone by giving notice to quit. He said he was going to retire and gave no other reason for his departure, although it was well-known he was unhappy with the hospital administration at the time. Anyway, he put in his notice, everyone wailed and gnashed their teeth, and someone managed to pull themselves out of a blue funk long enough to organize a going-away picnic at one of the local parks. This was very much against Dr. Santell's wishes; he was not a sociable man and he didn't like to bring a lot of attention to himself. The day of the picnic was overcast and misty, and almost a hundred people showed up to pay their respects to the great man. Apparently he showed up reluctantly and didn't stay long, but that was all right with everyone in the end, because he didn't stay away long either.
Two weeks later he was back on the job, making rounds with the residents as if nothing had happened.
I don't know what kind of changes the hospital administration managed to make in order to entice Dr. Santell back, if any, but I like to believe loyalty to the hospital and its residents had a lot to do with his decision to return. I know he didn't like change in any form, but I believe he could have gone on to another job or another pursuit and done well, so there was no desperation in his choice, only loyalty, curiosity, and perhaps a determination to see things through, come hell or high water.
I must confess, the memory of Dr. Santell influenced my decision to stay on at Gimbels last week. It's not as if I need the job. There's plenty of work to do in Rural and its environs, and I can be working somewhere else tomorrow if I wanted to. But I don't like to give up that easily. I want to see things through as long as I can. Maybe I'll get a picnic out of it, if nothing else.
Hope things are going alright for you and Noo as well.
Posted by: dragonfly | May 30, 2009 at 03:47 AM