My Top Ten Tips For Young Physicians
Mar 07, 2025
The Next Generation of Women Physicians
At this point in my career, I have a lot of young physicians come to me for advice. I have to say, giving back to the next generation of women physicians is one of my greatest joys.
I love answering questions like: How do I balance my home life with physician life? I am overwhelmed with clinical duties. How do I negotiate for nonclinical time? I had a bad clinical outcome, and I can’t seem to recover. How do I move forward? Joining this committee will be a time effort. Will it help me toward promotion? How do I show my Chair I am a leader?
After spending years learning the hard lessons, my first piece of advice is always to surround yourself with a community of women physicians who understand where you are and what you are facing on a daily basis. You need people around you regularly who are able to support and champion you as you move forward in your career.
The Top 10 Pearls I Share With New and Peer Physicians on a Regular Basis:
- Give your family your best. Give your work the rest.
- Take a vacation every 3 months. Especially in the first few years. Trust me. Time away = burnout prevention.
- Watch out for financial incentive traps. Extra call, selling your vacation weeks, working extra shifts may be very appealing in the beginning, but you cannot put a price tag on protecting your wellbeing and remaining joyful in medicine.
- Say ‘yes’ to things early in your career, which will earn you the right to say ‘no thank you’ later.
- Say ‘yes’ to things that fall within your primary focus; the enemy of productivity is distraction.
- Make your clinical work count twice; quality, safety, research, and education projects are much easier to accomplish if in line with your clinical work.
- When you fail, ask for feedback from people smarter than you; this allows you to fail forward.
- Connect with colleagues; they will be your lifelines when hard times come. We are in the business of humanity; hard times exist.
- Early in your career, say yes to things that will 1) put you on a stage, 2) put your name in print, 3) put you on national committees. Say no to things that require time but do not result in any of these things.
- Routinely connect with your chair or direct report. Do not assume she/he knows what you are working on or what you hope to achieve. Face to face time is invaluable.
All of this is so much more doable when you are plugged into a connected community of women physicians who get it, who will lift you up and help you navigate the tough decisions. If you haven’t found a community like this yet, I created The Table for exactly this purpose. Try it for two weeks FREE!
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