Lifestyle

I was on home call this weekend and only had to go into the hospital once for an emergency appendectomy. In thinking about this, I was reminded that compared to most specialties, anesthesiology is pretty amenable to a nice lifestyle. Unlike other fields with constant inpatient responsibilities, voluminous telephone calls, or clinical workloads spread among few residents, anesthesia is lucky to have more flexibility, pretty reasonable call shifts, and no primary hospital services. But what I like about my colleagues is that few people enter the field solely for its lifestyle. Cases are often punctuated with highly stressful moments and the weekdays can be intense and long. Many other fields are even more benign with few or no emergencies, free weekends, and days that don't start at six. Fields like radiology, dermatology, ophthalmology, pathology have strong draws for those wanting more free time. But I can't deny that anesthesia offers a great work-life balance.

I love anesthesia because it offers a highly technically, medically complex, (occasionally easy) case load with a predictable workweek and usually a weekend reprieve. While I never really shirked from the tough 30 hour intern calls, I do appreciate being able to take advantage of free time and post-call days that aren't  consumed by sleep. "Lifestyle specialties" often get a bad rap for "taking the easy way out," and for a while I wondered whether I'd be bothered by it, but now I feel that as long as my job is satisfying and I'm serving patients, I'm happy and guilt-free during my newly discovered abundance of free time.