workaholicsanon
New member
- Joined
- Jun 19, 2009
- Messages
- 39
- MBTI Type
- INFJ
I am an INFJ and a physician, just finishing up residency now. I have an interesting story that really reflects how our personality type impacts our learning and working style as well as the specialty that we thrive best in.
Anyway, as a med student, I was all about the "save lives, save the sickest people." I guess I didn't use enough sensing function in making my decision, and ended up choosing anesthesiology for my specialty. Before you start anesthesiology you have to do internship as an internal medicine intern for a year. LOVED internship--lots of connections with patients, lots of discussion with colleagues working towards the common goal of doing as much as possible for the patient, lots of harmonious teamwork. I also got to teach med students. There were so many rewarding moments; my job gave my life so much meaning.
Well, then i went on to start my anesthesia residency. WHOO!! vigilance vigilance and more vigilance; even though I got along well with everyone, I always felt an undercurrent of an adversarial dynamic between anesthesia and surgery, between the OR nursing and anesthesia (nursing sucks up to the surgeons at the expense of anesthesia), it was like it was me vs. everyone else. Even the surgeons had their "team" and worked together as a team. Patient is asleep, and even when they wake up they still have meds on board that make them forget and act loopy, everything was pushed to be rush rush rush but at the same time I was trying to be an ultra-perfectionist so as not to kill anyone and to do justice to the patients. so long story short, boy was I stressed. I started wondering why i went to med school in the first place, that i would have been happier flipping burgers at the nearby Wendy's. My work was no longer meaningful to me in the least. a few months in, I started feeling physically ill, wiped out, depressed. My favorite parts of my job were working in the preop eye clinic, where I actually got to bond with the patients for like 10 min (but then never to see them again) and when the patient was waking up.
After about 4 months of that hell, I started working on transferring back to internal medicine, took me another 2 months to actually make the switch. Even though internal medicine has had its long hours, 30 hour shifts, etc. I have to say, i was NEVER as stressed in internal medicine as I was in anesthesia. I have been soooo much happier and again find my job meaningful and my life worthwhile.
At one point after I made the switch, i read the MBTI preferences for certain medical specialties, and it said infj tends to be happiest doing internal medicine or neurology. Anesthesiology apparently is better preferred among sensing types. Makes a lot of sense, in retrospect.
Things to keep in mind, going through the world of medicine as an INFJ:
--you are going to be evaluated by a lot of extroverted sensing types. They will not always understand you, nor will they be interested in trying to understand you. They judge you by whatever you tell them, and they want you to take initiative in telling them what you did, what you thought, etc, selling your ideas. Doing all this is unnatural for the INFJ and REALLY saps our energy trying to. I just came to terms with the fact that some of my evaluators will just underappreciate me and I can live with that, as long as I did justice in caring for my patients and in teaching my interns/medstudents.
--as a corollary to the above, I have tended to sacrifice efficiency/quickness for the sake of spending time listening to the patient, making sure I thought thoroughly through my patient's complaints and what might be going on with them, and making sure I addressed as much as I could for them. It just made my job more meaningful to me, to do so. I think this was the INFJ in me. The side effects of this are as follows:
a) your hours will be MUCH longer than those of your non-INFJ peers, because the workload is geared for superficiality and lack of caring. I was ok with the longer hours because I hated being rushed and I wanted my work to be meaningful for me. However, towards the end of residency I am feeling quite burnt out and needing a few years of "me time" to recharge. I also ended up gaining quite a few pounds because on most of my harder months I would really have no time to work out, and when i did have a day off, I would need it to recharge from the energy sapping ES world of medicine.
b) your non-INFJ/INFP evaluators will call you slow/inefficient and give you criticisms of this in your evaluations. I could care less; my work is about the patient not about them or me.
c) the people you supervise might be annoyed for their longer hours and for the perfection you seem to demand from them (and you will get in trouble for causing them to break work hour rules). As I progressed in residency, I adjusted my leadership to first explore how my "underlings" approached their medical practice style, and if they were the kind who would rather do things superficially and leave early, I let them as long as they did their responsibilities. If they were similar to me, being detailed, spending lots of time with the patient, addressing all their issues, and loving it, then I would back off and just let them do their thing but still supervise and remain available if they want me to help (i.e. I wouldn't be hovering over their heads rushing them out). Obviously, I appreciated those who fell in the latter category much more and it showed in their evaluations.
--you will be slightly different from most of your colleagues. Your oral presentations wont be the most eloquent ever, will tend to be full of details that others dont want to hear at which point you wont know what to tell them. Oh well, I lived. People will not always want to hear you out because of the lack of eloquence, but if not they end up regretting it because they missed out on some crucial details and some valuable outside-of-the-box thoughts. I have worked with some very eloquent people and I admire them so much, but I've come to accept the fact that i will never have that talent.
--your notes will be AMAZING. I've always gotten rave reviews about my notes. Basically the way I see it is, documentation is crucial for the following reason: letting other members of the team (primary team and consultants) as well as any future doctors taking care of the patient, know exactly what is going on with the patient, what your thoughts were, and what you did for the patient, in order to help them continue that good work, come up with new ideas, or help in their decisionmaking. What you say lasts in people's memory for like 2 minutes, and not everyone will be present to hear that. What you write is for posterity and for all to see.
So in summary, yes INFJs are doctors. Sure there are challenges in getting through the ES world of medicine and medical training, but ultimately i think it's easier for us to persevere despite those challenges because we dont care so much about "fitting in" and impressing our evaluators. We do this for a purpose, to add meaning to our lives through good patient care. And as long as we do justice to this purpose, we are happy. Just be careful about picking an appropriate medical specialty for yourself.
Anyway, as a med student, I was all about the "save lives, save the sickest people." I guess I didn't use enough sensing function in making my decision, and ended up choosing anesthesiology for my specialty. Before you start anesthesiology you have to do internship as an internal medicine intern for a year. LOVED internship--lots of connections with patients, lots of discussion with colleagues working towards the common goal of doing as much as possible for the patient, lots of harmonious teamwork. I also got to teach med students. There were so many rewarding moments; my job gave my life so much meaning.
Well, then i went on to start my anesthesia residency. WHOO!! vigilance vigilance and more vigilance; even though I got along well with everyone, I always felt an undercurrent of an adversarial dynamic between anesthesia and surgery, between the OR nursing and anesthesia (nursing sucks up to the surgeons at the expense of anesthesia), it was like it was me vs. everyone else. Even the surgeons had their "team" and worked together as a team. Patient is asleep, and even when they wake up they still have meds on board that make them forget and act loopy, everything was pushed to be rush rush rush but at the same time I was trying to be an ultra-perfectionist so as not to kill anyone and to do justice to the patients. so long story short, boy was I stressed. I started wondering why i went to med school in the first place, that i would have been happier flipping burgers at the nearby Wendy's. My work was no longer meaningful to me in the least. a few months in, I started feeling physically ill, wiped out, depressed. My favorite parts of my job were working in the preop eye clinic, where I actually got to bond with the patients for like 10 min (but then never to see them again) and when the patient was waking up.
After about 4 months of that hell, I started working on transferring back to internal medicine, took me another 2 months to actually make the switch. Even though internal medicine has had its long hours, 30 hour shifts, etc. I have to say, i was NEVER as stressed in internal medicine as I was in anesthesia. I have been soooo much happier and again find my job meaningful and my life worthwhile.
At one point after I made the switch, i read the MBTI preferences for certain medical specialties, and it said infj tends to be happiest doing internal medicine or neurology. Anesthesiology apparently is better preferred among sensing types. Makes a lot of sense, in retrospect.
Things to keep in mind, going through the world of medicine as an INFJ:
--you are going to be evaluated by a lot of extroverted sensing types. They will not always understand you, nor will they be interested in trying to understand you. They judge you by whatever you tell them, and they want you to take initiative in telling them what you did, what you thought, etc, selling your ideas. Doing all this is unnatural for the INFJ and REALLY saps our energy trying to. I just came to terms with the fact that some of my evaluators will just underappreciate me and I can live with that, as long as I did justice in caring for my patients and in teaching my interns/medstudents.
--as a corollary to the above, I have tended to sacrifice efficiency/quickness for the sake of spending time listening to the patient, making sure I thought thoroughly through my patient's complaints and what might be going on with them, and making sure I addressed as much as I could for them. It just made my job more meaningful to me, to do so. I think this was the INFJ in me. The side effects of this are as follows:
a) your hours will be MUCH longer than those of your non-INFJ peers, because the workload is geared for superficiality and lack of caring. I was ok with the longer hours because I hated being rushed and I wanted my work to be meaningful for me. However, towards the end of residency I am feeling quite burnt out and needing a few years of "me time" to recharge. I also ended up gaining quite a few pounds because on most of my harder months I would really have no time to work out, and when i did have a day off, I would need it to recharge from the energy sapping ES world of medicine.
b) your non-INFJ/INFP evaluators will call you slow/inefficient and give you criticisms of this in your evaluations. I could care less; my work is about the patient not about them or me.
c) the people you supervise might be annoyed for their longer hours and for the perfection you seem to demand from them (and you will get in trouble for causing them to break work hour rules). As I progressed in residency, I adjusted my leadership to first explore how my "underlings" approached their medical practice style, and if they were the kind who would rather do things superficially and leave early, I let them as long as they did their responsibilities. If they were similar to me, being detailed, spending lots of time with the patient, addressing all their issues, and loving it, then I would back off and just let them do their thing but still supervise and remain available if they want me to help (i.e. I wouldn't be hovering over their heads rushing them out). Obviously, I appreciated those who fell in the latter category much more and it showed in their evaluations.
--you will be slightly different from most of your colleagues. Your oral presentations wont be the most eloquent ever, will tend to be full of details that others dont want to hear at which point you wont know what to tell them. Oh well, I lived. People will not always want to hear you out because of the lack of eloquence, but if not they end up regretting it because they missed out on some crucial details and some valuable outside-of-the-box thoughts. I have worked with some very eloquent people and I admire them so much, but I've come to accept the fact that i will never have that talent.
--your notes will be AMAZING. I've always gotten rave reviews about my notes. Basically the way I see it is, documentation is crucial for the following reason: letting other members of the team (primary team and consultants) as well as any future doctors taking care of the patient, know exactly what is going on with the patient, what your thoughts were, and what you did for the patient, in order to help them continue that good work, come up with new ideas, or help in their decisionmaking. What you say lasts in people's memory for like 2 minutes, and not everyone will be present to hear that. What you write is for posterity and for all to see.
So in summary, yes INFJs are doctors. Sure there are challenges in getting through the ES world of medicine and medical training, but ultimately i think it's easier for us to persevere despite those challenges because we dont care so much about "fitting in" and impressing our evaluators. We do this for a purpose, to add meaning to our lives through good patient care. And as long as we do justice to this purpose, we are happy. Just be careful about picking an appropriate medical specialty for yourself.
Oh well, medical school isn't for everyone.
I wish all doctors and nurses were like them. They had very attractive qualities that patients like.
