Saying Goodbye to Instagram: A Warning to Med Students Online.

Why would anybody voluntarily kick themselves off of social media?

In our modern world, that's a fair question, and a few years ago I was asking exactly the same thing when one of my favourite accounts on instagram suddenly announced its goodbye.

I had been following a medical student from the US for years, well before I had gotten into medical school. I found her so inspiring. She seemed to have it all. She was so passionate about obstetrics and gynaecology, she was on several committee's and leading medical school societies, her fashion sense was impeccable, she sent out positive vibes and her posts always made my day.

I was DEVASTATED the day I opened my instagram to find her announcement, that in a few short hours, her instagram would be deleted forever... and then it was. I was left feeling so sad and full of questions as to what prompted her to do this.

Was she bullied online? Was it because she was finishing up her final year of medical school and wanted to erase her social media before job applications? Did she just want a clean slate as a doctor so her patients couldn't find and watch her personal life? WHAT WAS IT?

I never found out. I also never forgot.

Over time this idea of breaking up with social media at the end of medical school has become something that really resonated with me. I have been thinking about this for years, and after an incident at the hospital recently, it has become clear to me that now is finally the right time.

I don't want to cause the type of devastation I experienced when my med inspo account evaporated on me. To be fair her account was of actual celebrity status and was adored by people all over the world - and I'm just little old me. But on the off chance my decision to walk away from social media has upset you in a similar way, I am sorry.

For those of you who are here wanting to find out why I'm saying goodbye to instagram - grab a snack this might be a long one!

In The Beginning

I started my instagram in 2013 when I was 22, I had just finished my honours year and I was yet to get into medical school. Back then, I was a competitive cheerleader and mostly posted about our upcoming competitions, my training regimes and my cheer outfits. Then I began my postgrad degree in nutrition and started posting a lot about what I was learning in my course.

I didn't have too many followers or likes, but I was enjoying having a creative outlet.

Year after year passed and I still hadn't gotten into medical school. My friends and family were getting pretty sick of me living this 'ground hog day' kind of life. Sick of asking me how studying for the GAMSAT was going. Sick of asking me what I was going to do if I didn't get in AGAIN. Sick of listening to me say I was going to be a doctor, when to them, it was obvious I was not.

I started writing about my experience on my instagram, as a way to vent, process, keep a diary and keep motivated, without bugging my bored friends and family anymore.

I wasn't following the friends I had on Facebook on my Instagram, as I didn't see the point in seeing the same content on two platforms. So my instagram felt somewhat anonymous in the beginning.

I started connecting with other people studying for the GAMSAT, other people who were struggling to get into medical school as I was, and people who had successfully gotten into medical school that were super inspiring. We started to form a little online community. We shared resources, tips and tricks and our experiences. It really made me feel so much less alone in my journey. After watching all of my real-life in-person study buddies get into medical school and progressing through the course, many finishing and becoming doctors while I was still doing Des O'Neil's practice questions on my weekends, it was so comforting to find and form these supportive connections online. As 'millennial' as that might sound.

This platform soon became my happy place.

My instagram has always been my portal to support and inspiration, my yearbook, my diary, my photo album, it became a huge part of who I was.

When I Realised We Weren't in Kansas Anymore

When I finally got into medical school, I was SO excited to post and let my little online community know about the good news! I got almost 600 likes and close to 300 messages saying congradulations. Like I eluded to before, I was no big shot insta celebrity - but all these positive online interactions made me feel like I had, in a way, 'found my tribe', and I felt really lucky.

Fast forward to my first week of medical school, that's when things started to come crumbling down.

I attended our schools annual cocktail night at the end of our first week of medical school.

It was a welcome to the newbies and an opportunity for students in each year level to catch up from all of our clinical sites.

The venue had champagne and servers kept walking around topping up drinks like their lives depended on it. No body knew exactly how much they drank that night, as our one glass just never seemed to end. The social lubricant seemed to be welcomed for many of us, new to this cohort and keen to make friends.

To my surprise, I seemed to end up mingling mostly with a really fun and friendly group of fourth year students. I wasn't really sure why they were so keen to talk to a random first year student, or why they didn't seem be talking to any of the other first years. I didn't want to be rude, but I sort of wanted to go and meet more people from my own cohort. I kept trying to find a polite moment to wander back to my housemates and my partner, but the fourth years just seemed so nice and kept the conversation going.

Next thing I know they decide we should all do shots. I politely try to decline, but succumb to the peer pressure and their reasoning "you only start medical school once" - sure, just this once I guess, what's the worst that could happen?

The rest of the night is a bit of a blur, not surprisingly. I remember telling one of the fourth years repetitively that I love her earrings. I remember looks from my friends across the room like "what are you doing over there?". I remember my partner trying to come over to me and people telling him "she's alright man, she's just having fun".

I remember sitting alone with this one fourth year and him beginning to ask me really deep personal questions. A few month's into medical school I looked back on this moment and felt like he was taking a social history on me. I started telling him really personal things about trauma I had experienced in my life, overcoming my eating disorder and depression, how pathetic I felt that I couldn't get into medical school for so many years. He just kept pressuring me to answer his questions, and he seemed so friendly and kind - so I stupidly kept talking. The group of fourth years came over to us and said it was time for them to leave now and it had been nice getting to know me - I started feeling a bit confused about how the night had ended up. Not at all what I had expected. But at least I made some nice fourth year friends, right?

And then, as they were walking out of the venue and I was walking towards my friends at last, they all started yelling out to me in a mocking tone and laughing "Bye Emii Kate"

I had this sinking feeling in my stomach.

How did they know my instagram name? A minute ago they didn't even know me? Didn't we just meet for the first time? Who are these people? How did they know me? Is that why they were talking to me all night?

F*** what did I just do?

Absolutely humiliated.

Micro Moments Snowballed Into A Macro Problem

I decided not to think much about the cocktail night. I told my housemates and they assured me, I must have just had too much to drink and misheard them. That was the only reasonable possibility - and it sounded good to me. I was too embarrassed to bring it up or think about it again anyway.

The next med school social event rolled around, and the thought of drinking made me feel sick after the last event. I decided to stay home and spend some quality time with my partner instead, while all of my housemates and most of the cohort ventured out for a wild night.

The next day I woke up to a message from a girl in my cohort that lived down the street, asking if I was free to meet up with her to talk about something important.

I didn't really know this girl very well at the time, she seemed really nice, but her tone in this message made me feel really uneasy, like something bad was coming.

I met up with her and we went for a walk. She was the nicest. She had wanted to meet up with me to let me know what she had heard being said about me at the party. She was really worried for me.

She told me she had overheard several student in the years above us discussing my instagram. They were saying things like "wait till a consultant in the hospital gets a hold of her crap, they're going to give her such a hard time" and laughing at me.

My kind neighbour suggested I delete my account before a consultant did get a hold of it because from what she heard, that would be really bad for me, and she would feel horrible if that happened and she hadn't have said anything.

I'm grateful to this kind soul for coming to me bravely and telling me I was being bullied behind my back. It takes a lot to do that. Especially when we barely knew each other, and she really didn't have to look out for me at all.

I got pretty worried and wasn't sure what to do. I felt although everyone at the party must have been in on this joke.

I decided to speak to one of my housemates who was in one of the years above me and just asked her to tell me the truth, half scared she was also laughing at me behind my back too. She sat me down and told me that medical school unfortunately is a lot like high school. There was a lot of segregation in her year, to the point that the "cool kids" sat on one side of the lecture theatre and everyone else sat on the other side. She said she wouldn't be surprised if the "cool kids" were some of the people laughing at me.

I was devastated to find out, that after years of killing myself to get into medical school, that I had stepped into a real life version of 'Mean Girls', now that I was finally here.

I thought about deleting my account then. To give in to the bullies and remove the fuel to their flame and extinguish the bullying right then and there.

I even messaged the consultants I used to work with to ask them for advice about my account. They said if I wasn't being inappropriate, sharing patients details or being mean online to just ignore the rumour mill and get back to enjoying med school.

Then I started receiving so many messages from other premeds asking me how I kept motivated after failing to get into medical school again and again. I felt like I couldn't leave this community just yet.

I have always believed in becoming the change you want to see in the world. I know if I had have seen just one other person fail and get back up as many times as I did while trying to get into medical school, I would have felt so much less alone and so much less pathetic. I wanted to be that for someone else out there. I decided to cop the bullying, ignore it, in order to be the type of account needed when I was younger.

A Good Example has Twice the Power of Good Advice

A random sample of the type of posts I was making. Years later I read these now and cringe a little, like anyone does when they scroll back through their old posts. I am certainly a different person now to the girl who once wrote these posts. The content was pretty benign stuff. A little dorky sure, but it made me happy and it had brought a lot of positive connections into my life.

Just Keep Swimming

Suddenly I started getting followed in my account by students in my cohort, this was weird as prior to medical school I didn't really have people I knew personally as part of my online world. But I decided to go with the flow and follow back.

I kept posting my diary entries into my online happy place and convincing myself everything was okay. But even back then I felt things changing. My peers in my year started talking to me like they really knew me, despite not having much of an opportunity to get to know each other yet. I knew this was because they were reading my posts. It was strange to me as I assumed people in medicine would find my posts boring and keep scrolling. I had to get used to my whole year level following my personal journey, it was a bit awkward and made me want to post less, but then I started getting encouraging messages from people in my year and other years saying they really related to my experiences and were glad to hear they weren't alone in many of their struggles as well. So again, I continued.

I was spending hours a day on my instagram answering premeds messages in my inbox asking about medical school and the admission process as well talking to medical students from around the country, messaging me about experiences they were having at their school that they couldn't talk to their peers about for fear of being judged. It became an all consuming part of my life throughout medical school. But I loved it. I loved the connections. I loved living out this dream of being the person I wanted to be, trying to make a small positive difference to others and making them smile when they were feeling down or alone. I was addicted to it.

I'd all but forgotten that there was a group of people out there somewhere laughing about me behind my back and decided that their opinions were really none of my business anyway.

I attended a conference for rural medicine during my preclinical years. I met students from other universities and learned so much about how amazing working in the bush could be.

I also learned a lot about how it was a well understood fact, that it was uncool to post about your medical school journey on social media, in any capacity. Students from other schools whipped out their phones and started showing each other people in their cohorts who posted all kinds of things about their experiences as a medical student. Laughing. Saying horrible things about them. How stupid they were. They hate people who make posts like that. Wondering how they could even get into medical school at all. How incompetent they will be as a doctor.

When they asked me if I had instagram - of course, I said no.

I was kind of annoyed. Why was it so uncool to be passionate anyway? If a student wants to post (without revealing any patient identifying factors of course) about the first time they successfully get a cannula, or how amazing they find a function in the body - so what? Why should passion result in being the target of bullying? What kind of toxic culture is this?

Surely we were ALL passionate to be able to get into medical school in the first place anyway. The competition these days is intense. The course itself is is also intense. To put yourself through this heavily challenging program, surely you have to have some passion. Why are we ridiculing those who post about it and share it with others? Isn't passion contagious? Why cant we just spread it and support each other? Apparently it's cooler to tear people down behind their backs.

Pretty disappointing, I thought when I got into medical school I would be united with all these like minded people, just wanting to make the world a better place and make a positive impact.

How naive of me.

I started wondering again, should I just delete my instagram? Should I be embarrassed of my account?

I didn't want to give into bullies, I didn't think that was the type of person I was. There was a bigger picture here.

The Moment We've All Been Waiting For

Finally it was time to start clinical school. The years we finally get to spend all day, everyday in the hospital, caring for patients and working as part of the treating team, feeling like we are really student doctors.

I received a message on my instagram from an old friend from my cheerleading days who said her sister was a doctor in Melbourne and knew me from instagram. I was half expecting her to tell me something nice like her sister was interested in being a bit of a mentor or something. Unfortunately she let me know that her sister had told her I had quite a reputation in Melbourne hospitals. I was very disliked for my instagram and I would probably find it hard to get a job in a few years because of how wide spread the dislike for me ran in the professional medical world.

This was beyond heartbreaking.

It was one thing to be living out some sort of weird time-lapse into high school bullying, but I had thought, like in high school, people grow up and get over it when they graduate?

It was a very different feeling to know that doctors that I had never met, in hospitals I had never been in, didn't like me. For posting about my reasonably boring life as a medical student, of all things.

Again, I thought I'll just take this news with a pinch of salt and remain positive. At this point it's still all been a bit of speculation and potentially Chinese whispers. Dont get too dramatic about it.

Then one day in the middle of one of our early rotations, while on a team that was notorious in our hospital for being unkind to students. My registrar sings to me in a mocking tone "I just saw your instagram". My heart sunk. This was the first time somebody had really truely, first handedly, confirmed the rumours I had been hearing.

She obnoxiously told me that a few of her doctor friends had been passing around my instagram on their phones in ressie's (the big tea room used by most of the doctors in the hospital). My friend and I were so shocked. I couldn't even respond with anything.

I had walked in to the hospital that day worried I wouldn't remember enough about the patients conditions in case my registrar asked me a difficult question about them. Never did I think the lowlight of my day was going to be, being teased by my superior for my irrelevant instagram page.

Our resident could see the shock and upset in my face and tried to comfort me briefly by saying "my girlfriend actually showed me your account too" I felt like telling him to just mind his own business. But luckily he continued and said "She is in the year below you, she finds your page really inspiring. I like it too" and gave me a smile as if to say "ignore the others, but also don't tell them I like your page because I don't want to get teased either". And off we went on an awkward ward round.

It was at this stage my friends asked me to leave them out of my posts and my stories as they didn't want reputations about themselves beginning to grow around the hospital as well. I started feeling like everything I posted was being scrutinised and teased behind my back and I didn't feel like I was as able to be myself as I used to be.

This constant sense of scrutiny started materialising in my real life as well. I stopped trying to answer questions in class for fear of judgement. I stopped putting up my hand to give things a go. I stopped engaging and talking to people as much as I used to because I wanted to make myself smaller and hide from the negativity I kept finding myself surrounded by.

There were many times through the year that doctors in the hospital would meet me for the first time and say "oh yes I know you from instagram" and then continue on as if they hadn't said it at all. I became too meek to even consider asking them to elucidate.

There was one day I was on a new ward with a new team and the only medical student there. I had been told this ward was really great and I would learn a lot on my own and was excited for the challenge. The team all introduced themselves to me and seemed really lovely and keen to teach. One of the doctors said he would take me to interview a patient, so that I could present the case to the consultant on the ward round that morning. I thought this was super generous and was grateful to take him up on the offer.

I couldn't quite put my finger on it, but something about his demeanour with me just wasn't right. He was nice, but something about him seemed off somehow. I had this weird feeling like I knew him from somewhere but couldn't place him. I assumed I had just seen him around the hospital before.

I took a history from the patient, I happily took all of the doctors advice about how to improve for next time, I presented the case to the consultant which was really scary as I hadn't done that before. And then I realised where I knew this guy from.

He was the fourth year from cocktail night. The one that had taken me aside and probed me to tell him all about my hardships in life so he could gossip about it with all his friends afterwards.

I think he could tell the minute the penny dropped for me. Like he had been wondering the whole morning if I knew who he was or if I would figure it out.

I felt so embarrassed to see him again. Even worse that it had taken me so long before I had even realised. I just felt really gross about the entire situation, all this guy knew about me, the way he and his friends mocked me, what he must have been saying behind my back. Then to take me under his wing at the hospital like it never happened. It was horrible. I wanted to confront him about it, but what use would that have been.

I couldn't go back to that ward for the rest of the week knowing that doctor was going to be there. I just felt so humiliated all over again.

Lockdown Strikes

I posted quite a lot about feeling depressed and anxious during lockdown. I knew I wasn't the only one feeling this way and I always believe that being open and vulnerable gives space for others to be open and heal as well.

I was very open posting about finally finding a good psychologist and what a difference that made to me and my wellbeing. All too aware that these posts were sure to be passed around in ressie's again to giggle over in the hospital.

But I received so many beautiful messages from people all over the world. I received screenshots from people who were inspired by my vulnerability and finally decided to book in a psychologist appointment too. Messages from people who had used my links and resources to find themselves a therapist. Pictures of peoples smiling faces after their first few therapy sessions. Tagged in post after post of people also starting to seek help and make positive steps towards better mental health and wellbeing.

Worth people laughing behind my back if my dorky posts were helping people even just a little bit.

No Longer Sparking Joy

I found it harder and harder to post anything. I felt like I anything I posted was being sent directly into the lions den at the hospital ready to be torn to shreds. I didn't think I had anything left that was inspiring enough or motivational enough for others, that it was worth being torn apart over anymore. The posts were few and far between and dwindling out.

At the end of one of my final year rotations, I had left too many of my assessments to be marked off till the last week and finally had the opportunity to sit down with my registrar and get them all ticked off. She had given me really solid feedback on my performance and how to improve for next year when I'm and intern that I was incredibly appreciative of.

She paused while filling out my forms to tell me that there's something she needs to discuss with me. That she is only bringing it up now as she has actually been asked to bring it up with me.

My heart sinks, I'm worrying that I incorrectly filled in a patients notes during this rotation or something and already feeling awful for what ever mistake must I have made.

To my horror, and still, shockingly to my surprise - she brings up my instagram, again.

She tells me that the team have been approached by multiple doctors in the hospital asking what they have done to me. They said something I posted on my instagram made it seem like I was having a horrible time on my rotation or that my team had mistreated me.

I just wanted to cry.

This was one of the best rotations I had, had in medical school. The team was well known for being one of the best in terms of teaching and welcoming students and I was beyond thrilled to have landed such a great placement by luck, as not everybody has the opportunity to work with this team.

There had been many times I had run into peers in the hospital while with my team and they had asked "which team are you with for this rotation" and I would proudly tell them and say "I'm so lucky, best team in the hospital" and I really meant it.

Little did I know, that at that time, my team had been getting all this conflicting background information from others that I was hating my time with them. They must have thought I was a psychopath. There I was openly telling everyone in the hospital every chance that popped up how great my rotation was, but they thought on my social media I was claiming the opposite.

I was given the advice to be more careful about the post I make online as it can reflect poorly on my professionalism.

A fair enough comment given the circumstances. But I was absolutely mortified.

I went home to comb through my posts to try to find out how anybody could have possibly inferred that I wasn't loving my rotation. I was so confused that anybody could have thought that when it was so far from the truth. What did I say that lead to my supervisors being concerned for my professionalism. Here I was thinking I was being so careful as well. But the lions still tore me to shreds anyway.

I think this was the post. But I guess I'll never be sure.

I posted this in a story at the beginning of this rotation. It's the only post I could find that I thought could have been interpreted in such a way that made it seem like I was having a bad time with my team. All of my other posts were either of my cats, sharing positive affirmations from other pages, or the odd post of me saying I'm loving medicine or that I was feeling tired as always (typical for most students).

I figure this was interpreted that I was being mistreated by doctors who had forgotten what it was like to be a medical student themselves. Thats a fair enough evaluation if this were a stand alone post, seperate from my barrage of posts sharing my excitement for final year placements. But it was certainly not the case.

This post was actually a reflection on the type of doctor and teacher I hope to become in the future. I have heard many horror stories of how badly students and junior doctors have been treated in the hospital, some even from my good my friends. I had also recently been reading articles and books on this topic.

For your reference I would read these just for a taste test of what I'm referring to:

BLOGS

Something rotten inside the medical profession: (heavy content warning)

https://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2017/01/something-rotten-inside-medical-profession.html

The ugly side of becoming a surgeon: (heavy content warning)

https://mindbodymiko.com/the-ugly-side-of-becoming-a-surgeon/

10 reasons why the medical training crisis is here to stay: (lighter content)

https://medicguild.com/articles/10-reasons-why-the-medical-training-crisis-is-here-to-stay/

Things that made us cry during internship: (lighter content)

https://medicguild.com/articles/things-that-made-us-cry-during-internship/

Junior doctors launch class action over unpaid wages: (lighter content)

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-03-16/junior-doctors-launch-class-action-over-unpaid-wages/13251730

BOOKS

Emotional Female:

https://www.penguin.com.au/books/emotional-female-9781760894627

Walking out on the boys:

https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/628247.Walking_Out_on_the_Boys

Going under:

https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/45755736-going-under

Although the post I made was 'short and sweet' and didn't fully get my point across. I had been heavily reflecting on a lot of the negative sides of medicine and wishing so badly that they didn't exist. The closer I get to finishing medical school, the more worried I get about becoming junior doctor and entering the bull pen. The sense of dread that we're about to go through some of the worst years of our lives, while trying to do the thing that we love.

This post was intended to be a promise to myself to remember this feeling, as a medical student, to do all I can throughout my career to look after the juniors I will come to supervise along the way.

It was actually inspired mostly by my fantastic team who had been the perfect role models for this behaviour. They gave me countless opportunities to learn, the spent time they were not obligated to spend helping me and giving me advice, they bought me coffee's and introduced me to patients as part of the team. They were incredibly welcoming, wonderful teachers and I felt like the luckiest student to have been assigned to their department.

And for this silly instagram post to become the reason they doubted my professionalism or how genuine I was, was the final straw for me.

This platform and all the wonderful things it has brought to my life is no longer worth jeopardising my career or mental health over.

A Sad Goodbye

I will dearly miss the many connections and online friendships I have made over this platform over the past 8 or so years.

I will be forever grateful for every kind message and comment I have exchanged with so many beautiful people on this platform. I hope you know that the conversations we had, often when I was feeling down, were the reason I kept this page for so long. It is because of the unbelievable kindness and beautiful connections so many of us made that it was so hard for me to walk away from this online world.

If I could keep all of you in my life without the negativity this account has brought with it, I would.

For now, I think everything I could give to this platform would be better delivered through the Med Mentors account instead. All of my words of wisdom and advice to my premed friends can be found and amplified with the voices of many other generous medical students wanting to give back to the next generation of future doctors as I do.

I am so grateful to all of you for your love and support, without you and this journey online together I would not have been able to lift Med Mentors off the ground and make it into the national level non-for-profit organisation it is today, able to help hundreds of students on their journey to medical school every day.

My dream for a long time has been to work towards replacing the toxic culture in medicine with one of support and collaboration. www.medmentors.com.au

I believe the negative culture many of us experience in medical school and in our hospitals stems right back to the competitive nature surrounding medical school entry. Premeds are taught to be secretive, manipulative, undermine one another in order to get ahead and get into medical school. This behaviour can be carried with us and further normalised as part of our medical school culture. Finally becoming a pervasive part of medicine, in all specialties and at all levels of training.

Med Mentors aims to break down this negative culture from where it stems and replace it with a cultivating culture of support and collaboration through mentorship. We are already seeing our undergraduate mentee's being successful in their medical school applications and being inspired to become a mentor for the next generation. This multi-level collaboration and support helps break down barriers to seeking help from peers, normalises struggles and provides shared coping mechanisms and resources, as well as invites positive changes to our culture as a whole.

We hope this carries on into our hospitals and helps to eliminate the archaic toxic culture within medicine in the years to come.

What about the bullies in the hospital?

I forgive them.

I understand how difficult it is surviving in medicine. We all work our butts off trying to succeed in this unforgiving environment. It can wear us down.

It is easier to pull out our phones and connect with our peers over teasing some stupid med students account than becoming overwhelmed by the stressors in our work or our home life.

We constantly search for little escapes from how hard and unrelenting medicine can be. Trying to get into a training program under the current crisis. Trying to find the time to eat, workout, see a doctor, call your mum have any type of social life. Trying not to think about your mistakes and shortcomings that are pointed out to us so cavalierly almost on a daily basis by supervisors trying to help us to improve. An innocent joke at someone else's expense might just be a quick fix to get us through the day.

Wanting to fit in, is human nature. If all of your peers are gathered around a phone laughing about an overly enthusiastic and naive post from a medical student - of course its easier to join in. You don't want to be the next target after all. Although, chances are at some point you will be.

I hope this culture changes in the years to come.

It is incredibly sad that for so many of us we came into medicine wanting to help people. And now that we are here tying to do that, we are almost punished for it.

Impossible standards to uphold, the hidden curriculum we must abide by, the horrendous culture we must never openly disrupt for fear of losing valuable references and job opportunities in the future.

This culture has become so deep rooted and normalised within the profession that people no longer even think to question or evaluate it. To most people just trying to survive with in it, it just is what it is. Sad.

How will you live without social media?

There is always two sides to every story. This is the side of mine that I am on, and I may never know the truth behind these experiences from the other side. Take this blog with a pinch of salt, like most horror stories. But also use it as a warning. I don't want anyone going through what I have been through or feeling as crap as I have felt because of social media.

There are a lot of great things about social media, but it still comes with a toll, and that toll is different for everyone.

If you start thinking you might break up with instagram, I'll leave a few more blogs here on how to do it and downloading your data to keep for yourself. As well as what life without instagram could mean for you and your loved ones - spoiler alert, it looks pretty good.

I still LOVE medicine, and I believe there are people like me out there who don't care about the drama or the hospital hierarchy and just want to do their best for their patients.

So for now, I'm signing off and going in search of these doctors. My real life, in person 'tribe'.

And where I will end up... to quote the great Emma Stone's closing line from 'Easy A'

"The really amazing thing is, its nobody's god damn business"

(cue Dont You (Forget About Me) by Simple Minds)

xo