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The life of a doctor isn’t easy these days. Many are saddled with massive student loan debt, work long hours and continue to deal with the trauma of treating patients during the pandemic.
Doctors, nurses and other front-line health-care workers bore the brunt of the pandemic. Many contracted covid-19, and some even had to intubate their colleagues. Others developed long covid, and some suffered such intense emotional pain that they died by suicide. Doctors who want to seek mental health support are fearful of retribution from state licensing boards.
National Doctors’ Day is celebrated every March 30 to recognize the contributions of physicians. The first Doctors’ Day was observed by Eudora Brown Almond, the wife of a Georgia doctor who sent notes and flowers to physicians. She chose March 30 because it’s also the date in 1842 when anesthesia was first used, a remarkable milestone in patient care. The day became an official holiday when Congress passed a proclamation in 1991.
To celebrate National Doctors’ Day, I wanted to highlight the contributions of Shirlene Obuobi, a cardiologist, cartoonist and author, who writes regularly for The Post. Recently, I had the chance to chat by email with her while she was on a short break at the hospital. Here’s our conversation.
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Q: Did you always know you would become a doctor?
A: I decided I wanted to be a doctor at a really young age. It was a fairly practical decision; my mom is a neonatologist, I grew up in health-care environments, and I was a high-achieving kid who wanted to make her West African parents proud. My reasons got more complicated and personal with age. I find that medicine has the potential to be inherently fulfilling both intellectually and emotionally. I like that my job allows me to be a part of peoples’ family, so to speak. Cardiology was a bit different – I joke that I went into it kicking and screaming near the end of my first year of residency. It’s notoriously intense, but I love the physiology, the scope and the constant movement in the field.
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Q: How did you get into writing and art while you were also being a doctor?
A: I’ve been writing and drawing for as long as I can remember! I’ve been creating stories and processing my experiences through art since I was a kid, and continuing to do so during my journey through medicine was a given.
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Q: What’s your favorite aspect of creating comics or writing?
A: The daydreaming! When I have an experience, I often attempt to translate it into art in my head, or find ways to figure out how I could portray the scenario to someone who doesn’t have my context.
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Q: Do you think having this outlet helps you connect with patients or process the experience of being a doctor?
A: Absolutely. Maintaining empathy in health care and especially as a trainee requires active effort. People are our work, and they are our work when we haven’t slept for multiple days, when we’ve skipped meals, when our family members are getting impatient with us because we’re so rarely present. By revisiting my experiences in art, I’m able to process my own feelings and put myself in the shoes of not only my patients but my colleagues. I think it keeps me from becoming a complete nightmare.
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Q: What’s the stress level like now that the intense part of the pandemic – and the 7 p.m. cheering every night – is over?
A: Ha! Honestly, I don’t think the cheering ever really felt like it had much substance in the early days of covid. Most of my colleagues would say they’d prefer something concrete, like better pathways to loan forgiveness. It’s very stressful and usually thankless. But there are the occasional days and moments that make it worth it. Keep in mind, I’m a cardiology fellow. I have a sleep debt about five years deep!
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Q: What do you want patients to take away from your columns?
A: I have a couple of missions. I want to humanize medicine and the people in it. There’s a lot of dissatisfaction with the American health-care system that I think is misplaced upon the people who are the faces of it. But doctors and other health-care workers are people, privy to the same tendencies and biases as everyone else, and they also are subjected to a considerable amount of primary and secondary trauma that has been totally normalized, even though it has clear consequences on our mental health.
I also want to give people insight into how health care works from the point of view of health-care workers, so that they can better advocate for themselves.
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