Be there in their Vulnerable Moments as a Doctor! (ft. Dr. Yawney)
- Nela Friesen
- Feb 28
- 7 min read
Table of Contents
About Dr. Yawney
Dr. Yawney is a family doctor working in Taber. He works at the hospital, including clinic work, surgical assisting, working in the emergency room, long-term care, and working in the community on things like house calls. He has administrative work as part of his job, and also teaches at the University of Calgary. He also often has a student doctor working with him at the hospital. His work as a doctor includes a little bit of everything at the hospital.
What is Working in this Industry like?
An Average Day
Dr. Yawney usually arrives at work at around 8 AM. When he has shifts in the hospital, he immediately starts seeing patients. In the hospital, days in the emergency room are designed to work efficiently to help high-priority patients as soon as they need it. On days he works in the clinic, he reviews results from previous appointments and calls patients until the clinic opens at 9 AM. Then his day gets busy with back-to-back appointments meeting with patients if his day is fully booked. He likes to understand and get to know his patients, which can be difficult to do in 15-minute appointments, so his days get very busy. He relies on his team of medical office assistants to keep everything running smoothly. Dr. Yawney told me that he also enjoys times when there is less time pressure and no one is waiting on him, for example, doing house calls at the end of the day or assisting in the operating room when he is on someone else's schedule. It provides a nice break from his busy week.
Pay
The pay is really good. People in rural medicine get paid a bit more than other family physicians. The reason for this is that it is very busy. In rural areas, there is only one hospital for patients to go to, which employs only a few doctors, so those doctors have to be available at odd hours or work long shifts multiple days a week if the patients need it. There is no one else patients can go to for help. Dr. Yawney told me that it's not lost on him that, compared to like 95% of people, family doctors get paid very well. He believes the reason for this is that they train and work really hard to do their job, and it's also a risky job as they have lives in their hands. On a daily basis, they may be making decisions in life-or-death situations. To summarize, the higher pay takes into account the high level of training, high responsibility, long and irregular hours, and dedication to the job.
Work Conditions
The hours can vary, but are longer than the typical work week in other careers. Dr. Yawney will work about 48 hours in the clinic per week, including his scheduled 32 hours a week and extra administrative work. One day a week, he will also work a 12-hour shift in the emergency room. A common work week is 60 hours, and if he works more hours in the hospital or is called in for extra patients, it's not rare to work up to 80 hours in a week. Very rarely, in the worst-case scenario, he has worked up to 110 hours in one week, but this is not often, as it is very hard on the doctors.
In rural medicine, there is only one hospital with a few doctors that serves the entire community, so they need to be available when someone needs help, leading to longer hours. However, as the doctors and other hospital staff feel a deep sense of responsibility to their community and the patients, they can keep going through these long weeks. Still, the hospital is always looking for and recruiting more physicians to help address the shortage of doctors and help them have a better work-life balance. Dr. Yawney joked that when doctors talk about retiring, they often talk about going to a 40-hour work week job, as this would be a lot less than they work now, highlighting just how hard doctors work to serve the community.
This job can certainly be more stressful than some due to the high amount of responsibility doctors carry. However, it's important that when they think of how stressful it can be, they are aware of what a privilege it is as well. Doctors have the privilege of being a part of people's most vulnerable moments, a part of births and deaths and pivotal moments in people's lives. Patients are also gracious with physicians in understanding what they go through and how hard they work, which eases the stress as well. It gets easier over time. But most importantly, doctors are aware of the privileges they have in this job, and they don't take that for granted.
Independent or Collaborative?
This job is very collaborative. Everything outside of the one-on-one patient relationships and appointments is collaborative. He has a team with him wherever he goes, whether it's in the emergency room, the operating room, or the clinic. There are nurses, mental health practitioners, and others with various skill sets they can bring into situations.
In meeting with patients, it is independent in the sense that other nurses or hospital employees are not as involved. However, it is still very collaborative as the doctor has to work to understand and communicate with the patient. They also have to, together with the patient, decide on management or treatment plans.
Qualities Needed
Many qualities are very beneficial to a doctor. Doctors have to like people and have to like talking to them, as meeting with patients is a major aspect of their job. You have to like learning about science and biology, and how things work. Doctors also need to like finding the root cause of a problem, and have a desire to get to the truth or a solution. Being tolerant of uncertainty and complex situations in this field will also serve you well, as it isn't always immediately possible to make a diagnosis and treatment plan, or to find a way forward that satisfies all parties involved. You also need to be tolerant of bad things happening. Sometimes bad things can happen to patients due to disease, their decisions, or, rarely, the doctor's mistake. This can happen because doctors, despite their high level of training, are still humans. This leads to the last quality needed in a doctor, which is a critical one. A doctor must be able to own up to their mistakes and shortcomings to learn from them. A doctor cannot get defensive and refuse to address the situation. This kind of doctor is a danger to themselves and their patients, so it's important that they are able to own up to and learn from their mistakes.
Hardest Parts of the Job
The hardest part of the job is that it can consume your life. It's easy to forget yourself and not take care of yourself, and forget to be there for family and other important people when the job gets busy. Achieving a work-life balance is difficult in this industry.
How is this Career Rewarding?
As a doctor, you are a part of some of the most vulnerable moments in people's lives, including births, deaths, illness, and more. It is a privilege to be the person who is with them in these moments, doing everything you can to help them get through these times. As a doctor, you have the chance to help people who are hurting, making this a very rewarding career to get into.
Misconceptions
There are certainly misconceptions surrounding the job. A common misconception is that doctors can immediately know exactly what is going on when a patient experiences symptoms. Sometimes, the doctor can immediately make a fairly certain diagnosis, but often they will need to review the medical history and/or run tests to make a diagnosis. Medicine is complex, and even after nine years of school and ten years as a doctor, Dr. Yawney says he is learning more every day and making a diagnosis is not always an easy process. On the other hand, although this is rare, sometimes a doctor will make a very confident diagnosis, but the patient doesn't believe it, which can be difficult as well. A fun aspect of the job is becoming a better educator and communicator, so that they can better convey what is going on, whether there is certainty or uncertainty in the diagnosis.
Post-Secondary
Dr. Yawney first attended the University of Lethbridge for his undergraduate studies. In his third year of his Bachelor of Science in Biochemistry degree, he was accepted into medical school in Calgary. The medical program in Calgary is three years long, but note that many medical schools have four years of schooling. He found his undergraduate studies to be harder than medical school. During his undergraduate studies, he was very busy because he was taking difficult courses such as calculus and physical chemistry that took up more of his time. He had a very busy schedule with all his classes and labs. He found medicine school to be more enjoyable because medicine was his passion, so he enjoyed the classes more, and he had also built up good study habits by this time, which made the courses more enjoyable as well. Once you find your true passion in school, it will get easier because it's more enjoyable for you.
It is often difficult to get into this industry because of the schooling. Medical schools have low acceptance rates, so applicants must work hard to do well in their undergraduate studies and meet the requirements for medical school.
A piece of advice Dr. Yawney has regarding post-secondary is to do a co-op degree, where you go through the schooling, and get work placements in between to gain relevant work experience. He got three work terms in jobs that were curated for his degree and interests. This gives you a chance to earn some money while in university and gain work experience. He believes it is worth delaying your graduation by a year for this. Many people will often go back to one of their work placement jobs as their first job after graduation, which is an advantage, as it can help them gain their footing in their new career.
Advice for High School Students
A misconception is that there is a defined path that students should follow from high school, which is to go straight into medical school. However, it's important to follow your passions. If that leads you to medical school after high school, that's great, but students shouldn't do it simply because they feel like they have to. There are other ways people will enter the industry, such as being a nurse, paramedic, social worker, biochemist, or teacher, etc, first, who can then go on to complete medical school to become a doctor if that's what they decide to do.
Comments