email article
Before COVID-19, I left the practice of medicine for what would turn out to become an entire year. While away, I found a new way of seeing our hearts and bodies as humans in the medical profession, allowing me to return.
Here are five lessons I learned:
1. Perfectionism doesn't make you perfect
If perfectionism isn't an unwritten rule in our profession, it's, at minimum, a heavily reinforced personality tendency. When I first faced my perfectionism, I tried to argue it was a good thing.
Of course, I'm a perfectionist -- I'm a physician. We have to be perfectionists. If we're not, people die.