Fired for seeing her own patients: moral injury and life after medicine

A physician was fired by the doctors she had trained, in part because she preferred to see her own patients herself. Moral injury, she argues, does not require 100-hour weeks. Sarah A. Vlach is a physiatrist and sports medicine physician. This episode is based on her article "Moral injury doesn't care how many hours you worked," published on KevinMD. You will hear how her working conditions slowly deteriorated, including nine months without a medical assistant, and why her first response was to knuckle down and work harder. She describes how financial incentives like RVUs now shape decisions in both corporate and private practice, and why she sees a two-track system forming as more clinicians move to cash-based care. She offers advice for new physicians starting out with large loans, and she explains how the Physician Support Line and writing about the experience helped her. Press play to hear what she wishes she had done sooner, and why she has found there is life after being a physician.

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