Is it possible to actually love working in healthcare?
I think most people who get into healthcare truly have the best of intentions. They want to help people, make a difference in the lives of their patients, and maybe even enjoy their job and their lives. Then they start working and it doesn’t seem to take long for their passion and excitement to disappear. I’ve met people in the industry of healthcare, who are less than 3 years out from school and they are already counting down until retirement.
After 15 years working as a physical therapist, I haven’t found myself quite to that level of despair. There have been plenty of days when I came home and spent hours crying on the couch. Other days, I felt like screaming on the phone with insurance companies who denied continued care for people who needed it. I cursed the documentation that I was forced to write after each session and I found myself relentlessly annoyed trying to help people who didn’t want my help.
In short, I was very frustrated with healthcare. If you wanted to see me get fired up, all you would have to do is ask me what I thought of the state of healthcare in the world, and you would probably need to take a snack break before I finally took a chance to catch my breath.
Fast forward to my current state and relationship with healthcare.
I absolutely love it. Truly. I enjoy working with all different types of patients. I don’t get bogged down by insurance or hospital policy, and you won’t find me curled up in a tearful pile of despair on my couch.
Many things changed for me during this period of growth, but the biggest ones I’ve mentioned below.
- I stopped believing that I knew more than the person I was working with.
- I realized that insurance could prevent me from doing many things, but it could never stop me from caring about the human being in front of me.
- Most of the energy exhaustion was coming from me, not the system.
- The system doesn’t need to be perfect in order for me to love what I do and to be effective with my patients.
- I don’t have to fix everything all at once to effectively change a person’s life for the better.
As I realized these things for myself, my experience of working in healthcare began to transform. It started to become everything I ever thought it could be. I get to connect with my patients, have real lasting impact on their lives, find simple solutions to the things that are most important to them, and all the while enjoying my life.
Maybe loving your work in healthcare actually starts here, within us.
Are you curious about what it would be like to actually love working in healthcare?
I’d love to show you what’s possible.