I’m beyond pleased to tell you, I’ve completed my book giveaway as part of the launch of my new book, Save Lives, Enjoy Your Own. I’ve sent over 700 books around the globe, from the US to Switzerland, Nigeria to Saudi Arabia, and Hong Kong to Australia. This process involved a steep learning curve. Sometimes I fought with my email service provider, other times I was running to Staples for a critical roll of label tape. Sometimes I had a surge of energy, personalizing an inscription by first name, wishing them success in their career and beyond! Other times my signature looked like a middle school boy’s boxy scrawl, signaling the fatigue I didn’t realize was creeping in. All of this was actually a part of an ideal week for me. Why?
Because as I signed and packed each book, I knew it had the potential to change the course of someone’s future career. I knew each little package could contain just the encouragement the recipient needed to become the next superstar in medicine.
What’s an ideal week for me as an interventional radiologist?
Once, a mentee asked me what an ideal week looked like for me, as an IR. It’s an interesting question, and it varies from week to week. Since I spend most of my work life at a level 2 trauma center in the community, I’ll describe my ideal week there. As to my ideal week off, that looks pretty different, so I’ll write about that next. It definitely deserves its own blog post.
Rolling out of bed: before 8 am is an emergency
My ideal week as an IR involves coming in each day at 8 am. I’m on call through the night, and the ideal week involves racing in once per week to rescue a bleeding trauma, whether from a pelvic crush injury or a liver laceration. The best weeks for me include a moment where I sweat: I race to fix the bleed as fast as I can.
Since I thrive on the variety of cases in private practice at my insitution, the ideal week also includes a uterine artery embolization with peri-procedural management and follow up. It involves a few image guided biopsies, where I can stretch my ultrasound skills a bit, and perhaps a thermal ablation of locoregional disease, like a liver metastasis. I love doing peripheral arterial work, and I recently had the pleasure of taking over a case from a colleague, where he thrombolysed, or dissolved clot in the popliteal artery harboring an underlying aneurysm. I was able to exclude the aneurysm with a well-positioned stent-graft.
The ideal work week includes routine cases, too
My ideal week involves bread and butter cases like permcath & port placements, declots, bone biopsies, and abscess drainages. Every case is an opportunity to hone my techniques, with the goal of operating as painlessly and stealthily as possible. Routine cases also allow for time to teach my growing team about peri-procedural management for common procedures.
A typical week involves going home anywhere between 3 pm and 8 pm when I’m on call. At my hospital, one IR is responsible for all the work that comes in, so we leave when the work is done. There is a typical rhythm to each week: I stay a bit later on Mondays and Fridays, while the mid-week days are (a bit) more predictable. Even on call, I might meet a friend for dinner, as I did the other day.
The evening routine
When I’m not catching up with a friend, most nights I’m headed home. Thursday nights my husband teaches a music lesson, so sometimes I’m rushing home just in time to be with my little boy as my husband starts his lesson. We eat and play, this week, rolling a rubber ball around the living room. Wes takes a bath while I shower, then he demands a late night snack as I try to brush his teeth.
After our little sprite is down, my husband watches some of a movie, while I listen to a mindset recording. We prepare to get some rest!
Getting going each morning: my routine
Mornings involve a pot of coffee and a simple routine before I’m out the door. I have a blessedly short commute of less than 10 minutes to our local hospital, and I appreciate that every day. Side note: I highly recommend you take this into account as you choose a job and place to live, when the time comes. A shorter commute= a better quality of life!
At work, I supervise residents who are interested in learning simple procedures like paracentesis, catheter removal, and the like. They pop in and out of my procedures when they can, and they come to me with questions. Though I don’t have radiology or IR residents, I enjoy the teaching and interaction that occurs at my community teaching hospital with trainees of different stripes.
My ideal week has room to breathe
During room turnaround time, or during quiet moments, I might type up a blog post like this one, or edit, or format one. I might call a plumber or make an appointment to see my accountant on my next week off. There’s usually some space in the day to have a phone call with a colleague, answer some emails, or complete a task for my committee work with the Society of Interventional Radiology.
In summary, my ideal week at work involves some straightforward cases mixed with a breadth of challenging cases and consults. I truly enjoy my work, and generally don’t feel it encroaches too much on family or personal time. Even during busy weeks, there is plenty of time for sleep and basic self-care.
Taking care of myself as I care for patients
I always sit down for lunch, but the specific time varies, since I squeeze it in between cases. During my break, I chat with colleagues in the doctors’ lounge about our patients in common, hospital politics, and life. Each day, as long as I eat lunch and have time for tea, I feel like I’m taking care of myself, no matter how hard I’m working.
An ideal week is one in which I feel I did the best work I could, and no one got hurt. It’s one in which I feel in sync with my colleagues, and we have a chance to talk about the practice and any issues at hand. If I got to save a life or help a patient understand their condition better, that’s icing on the cake.
What’s your ideal week like right now? Or, what do you think your ideal week SHOULD look like? Build the ideal week for you, and you might just find it out there in the job market!
Share your thoughts by leaving a comment below.
And a final note for this week: THANK YOU to all the sponsors who bought books for students and trainees around the globe! I couldn’t have accomplished this without them.
Click on their names or business names to learn more about the good they are doing in the world!
The Save Lives book giveaway was accomplished with the help of the following sponsors:
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Thank you for the article! I am curious: what does being on call look like for you overnight? How often do you return to the hospital in the late night/early morning in a week’s time?
At my level 2 trauma center it’s an average of once per week for late night or middle of the night call-backs!