If you’ve been keeping up to date with my weekly newsletters, then you know I have recently quit my job as a physiotherapist working in healthcare.
In this BLOG, I want to provide some insight as to why I decided to quit and what working as a physio is really like.
My job as a physiotherapist
I studied physiotherapy in the UK at the University of Southampton, graduating in 2020. Around 9 months after beginning work in the NHS, I remember being at the peak of my unhappiness.
From the start, my goal was always to become a specialist musculoskeletal physiotherapist (treating patients with back pain, shoulder pain, post-operatively after hip or knee surgery, and working with athletes). I worked really hard and ended up achieving this goal in record time (within the first 1.5 years of my physio career).
Of course, when you start out at the bottom you must work your way up and do a lot of things that you really don’t want to do (also known as band 5 rotations).
I felt trapped and hopeless…
This was all during the height of the covid pandemic, so I was working what felt like long hours on a 7-day working rota, meaning that I mostly didn’t get 2 days consecutively for weekends.
The icing on top of the cake was working on calls, which is basically where you work a full day and then from your finish time until 7:30am the next morning, you could get called in at any point to perform chest physio on a respiratory patient. Once I’m home from work, I’m mentally checked out so to be on call during my non-working hours means you can’t fully relax. If you did get called out at some point during the night or the early hours of the morning, you would be expected to be in work the next day to work your full shift.
I am sure there are laws preventing you from working like this…
Anyway, I’m not here to slate the NHS.
The people in the NHS are some of the kindest, most generous, hardworking people you will ever meet. Additionally, the NHS is amazing for providing free healthcare for everyone.
I felt trapped & paralysed living the same day repeatedly…
My unhappiness stemmed from the fact I felt like I was trapped in my current situation.
However, I had sacrificed so much and worked so hard to become a physio that I felt like I should just stick with it. My friend Dr Chris briefly describes this as the Sunken Cost Fallacy. This is where you feel like you’ve already put so much into something, and you keep putting more and more despite already being in a loss.
A good example is choosing to watch a boring movie because you’ve paid for the ticket. In my case, I continued pursuing physio as a career because I had done 1000 hours of placement and worked nearly 5 years in healthcare already.
The best physiotherapist is one that is happy
Over my time working in healthcare, I noticed most of my colleagues were miserable. I’doften hear the phrase “TGIF” or “Thank God It’s Friday” around the workplace on Fridays. This basically means they were living for the weekend.
In life we have role models (people you want to be like) and negative role models (people you don’t want to be like. I suppose in a sense I had negative role models (because I did not want to end up like my colleagues in 20-30 years’ time).
Physio is quite a draining job emotionally, so your “cup” must be full or near full to be empathetic towards others, and to do your job to the best of your ability.
I felt that in this last year (especially in the last few months), my compassion and empathy has been running on empty; this is known as compassion fatigue.
Acknowledging my privilege
I want to fully acknowledge my privilege. I come from a middle-class background with the hardest working parents. We never really struggled with money, but we also never lived extravagantly either.
I am so blessed to have a roof over my head and food in my belly.
I know there are so many people out there who have it worse, but I also know there are so many people that have it better too.
I am grateful for the education I have had as well as the opportunities
However, I also know I have a ton of potential and if I stayed as just a physio, I would never achieve it.
The life motto that I now live by
I always ask myself, If I were to die tomorrow, would I be happy with the life I am living today?
Life is so short. The average life expectancy is 73 years globally.
Why waste 40 plus years of that (over half your life) doing a job you don’t enjoy?
Why waste your life doing something you don’t find fulfilling?
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