Next week I'll be headed down to Moab for a Wilderness Advanced Life Support class. I'm excited for a number of reasons not the least of which is that my whole family will be meeting me there and my dad and I are taking the course together. My dad is one hell of a surly, and excellent, ER doc (formerly family practice) and one of the original members of the Wilderness Medical Society. I've been going to their conferences with him since I was pretty young and I've had the opportunity to meet some cool people (Like Dr. Auerbach, and Alex Lowe among others) and learn a lot about 'improv' medicine- which seems to fit well with EMS.You see, the people I meet at these conferences give me hope that I won't be miserable if I become a doctor. To often I'm around docs who are workaholics and have completely martyred themselves for the cause. But, at the WMS meetings I've meet doctors (and nurses, and PAs) who have been able to combine their passions of medicine and the outdoors. They are all very much more happy than your average doctor. Most of them use their high level of income to work less (and, gasp, make less money) and play more. They are the doctors I look up to, not the overworks asshole attendings I am usually around.
I'm not opposed to working hard but in the end it has to be worth it. 80 hours a week once your outside of a residency isn't worth it to me. Combining my passions is.
