Begin Your Journey: Urologists discuss work-life balance

In this installment of “Begin Your Journey,” Anne M. Suskind, MD, MS, FACS, FPMRS, discusses work-life balance with host Scott A. MacDiarmid, MD, FRCPSC. MacDiarmid is a urologist with Alliance Urology Specialists in Greensboro, North Carolina. Suskind is an associate professor of urology; obstetrics, gynecology, and reproductive services, associate chair of faculty affairs and diversity, equity, and inclusion, and chief of neurourology and female pelvic medicine and reconstructive surgery at the University of California, San Francisco.

Transcription:

MacDiarmid: Give us your thoughts on work-life balance. It's like gratefulness; the term gets overused, but there's so much to it. Doctors are just out of balance. We've memorized this life of delayed gratification. What are your thoughts on work-life balance from a practical standpoint and an emotional standpoint?

Suskind: I don't have an answer for it, and I know for myself, it looks different at different points in my life and career. But I think you clearly can't neglect either one. "Balance" is such a loaded term; I don't really know what balance means, in terms of this, but I think that the happier you are, I think they just should be so interwoven. The happier you are in your personal life, I think, the better you are as a doctor, and the better you are as a doctor, the better you can be in your personal life. I think that they're just they are so intertwined that it's hard to disconnect them. We live in this world of opposites, right? Where we have our work life and our personal life, and they're completely separate. And I think that's dangerous and difficult to do at the same time, because in a way, there's really no distinction. We should show up as our authentic selves in whatever setting we are in and do our best and be who we are. And there shouldn't necessarily be that distinction. I think we create the distinction because we're unhappy at work or what have you, or that there's many different reasons there can be that distinction. But I think that when we're really in the flow, and things are going really well, they're going well in all parts of your life, and there's no lack in either one. It's this seamless flow. It's not always like that; it's not easy to get that. But I think when you're feeling that you're out of that, that's another opportunity to take stock of where you want to make some changes and make them because the change that you make on either side, to use the dualistic kind of language that I'm trying to avoid, of course, will benefit the other.

MacDiarmid: I think it's pretty well studied that, from the clinical psychology standpoint, that you want to be pretty well balanced in most of the domains: family, friends, community work, etc. I mean, let's face it, doctors are about working and, I think that's probably been a bad strategy, especially when work goes south, now you're left with all your eggs in 1 basket. To really start prioritizing these other domains is so important. I try to do both; you think you can have both, but I think that's a losing formula. And many chances you start struggling, you're really just battling your own conscientiousness and ego and money and things like that. And I think we have to take it seriously.

Suskind: And I think, like you were kind of alluding to, I think it sets us up for failure to think that we need to be perfectly balanced in all domains. You're never going to be perfectly balanced, right? It's a dance; it's an ebb and flow, and hopefully over decades you're balanced, right? But at any one time there's going to be something that probably needs more of your attention than something else and realizing what that is and what the right moves are for you.

This transcription was edited for clarity.