Clerkship is one of the busiest time for any medical student during their training. A particularly stressful time for me was during my pediatric rotation. Not only was it my first clinical rotation in clerkship, I was also taking two master-level courses and continuing my extracurricular involvement with the IMAGINE clinic. I was completely overwhelmed and felt like there was endless amounts of work to do. In order to maximize the amount of time dedicated to attending clinics, classes and completing work, I decided to cut out all activities I deemed “non-essential”. The first thing I started to neglect was personal care, specifically, cooking and exercising. Despite my efforts, I still felt like I did not have enough time. To further compensate,
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A fundamental mistake I made was neglecting my personal wellbeing in lieu of trying to complete more work. Not exercising and eating poorly not only affected how I felt on a day-to-day basis but it made me less efficient as I was more distractible and irritated. My strategy to combat this is to mark off “restricted” time each week on my calendar dedicated to activities related to personal care. This time is to be exclusively used to exercise, partake in personal hobbies and see friends/family. Another important decision I made was to discontinue my involvement with some of my extracurricular activities. It’s important to have insight into your own abilities and to be able to step down when you think you are unable to complete your roles to the best of your abilities. No matter how busy I will be in the future, I will make a stronger effort to prioritize personal wellbeing with the understanding that it will positively influence all other aspects of my …show more content…
While it is important and necessary for physicians to be actively involved in policy work, academia and research; they must do it in a professional manner. Professionalism in this sense is being able to complete the tasks to the best of your ability. Over commitment can lead to unprofessional tendencies such as incomplete/late work, poor quality of work and missed meetings. As a future physician, I will continue to embrace academia and scholarly activities but I will be more cognizant on the implications of “having too much on my plate”. I will embrace the lessons I have learned from this experience and implement the many strategies I developed to my future
A fundamental mistake I made was neglecting my personal wellbeing in lieu of trying to complete more work. Not exercising and eating poorly not only affected how I felt on a day-to-day basis but it made me less efficient as I was more distractible and irritated. My strategy to combat this is to mark off “restricted” time each week on my calendar dedicated to activities related to personal care. This time is to be exclusively used to exercise, partake in personal hobbies and see friends/family. Another important decision I made was to discontinue my involvement with some of my extracurricular activities. It’s important to have insight into your own abilities and to be able to step down when you think you are unable to complete your roles to the best of your abilities. No matter how busy I will be in the future, I will make a stronger effort to prioritize personal wellbeing with the understanding that it will positively influence all other aspects of my …show more content…
While it is important and necessary for physicians to be actively involved in policy work, academia and research; they must do it in a professional manner. Professionalism in this sense is being able to complete the tasks to the best of your ability. Over commitment can lead to unprofessional tendencies such as incomplete/late work, poor quality of work and missed meetings. As a future physician, I will continue to embrace academia and scholarly activities but I will be more cognizant on the implications of “having too much on my plate”. I will embrace the lessons I have learned from this experience and implement the many strategies I developed to my future