| | Practicing while being a doctor...
Well, the preposterous hours and pace force one to adopt a make-every-moment-practice point of view at least to some degree, as time for what most people would call formal practice can be very, very limited.
The extreme situations regarding sleep deprivation, crazy pace, intense personal interactions, very complex rapid-fire problems with very high stakes, life-or-death nature of some aspects of the work, the risks involved, the blood and odors, the violent patients, the lack of time to do things like urinate and eat for very long periods (sometimes up to 14 hours or so), along with the patients/family members/staff members with major personality disorders and the very complex politics on many fronts make for an extremely challenging job, a job that will show you daily what limits your practice, has, as you are likely to find them very, very rapidly under those conditions, and that really allows one to be more honest about what has been done, what hasn't been done, what else there is to work on, what holds up well despite profound pressures, and the like, so it is sort of like the ultimate pressure cooker beyond, say, a war zone, which at times the emergency department sort of looks like, though bullets flying are very rare (but fists, spit and vile language are not).
As to hindered my practice, that would very much depend on what one wanted to do. It is a great service, a great opportunity to do good in the world, a great opportunity to connect with and help thousands of people, to save lives, to increase the world's happiness and wellbeing, so were one looking for that with good pay, one can find it there.
It is not very good for one's own physical health at all: the circadian flips, the brutal hours, the lack of ability to take time to eat: very taxing on this mammal.
It is not good for the sorts of things that take very long hours of practice in a short space of time: finding, say, 14 days in a row to do serious concentration practices 18 hours/day so as to get up to the levels I can access when I get that sort of warm up: basically impossible in my current life, so that is a hindrance. However, I am going to be changing jobs and the hours won't be quite as extreme and more time for things like that will be possible, at very long last...
The Three Characteristics present at all times, and all sensations are worthy of investigation, so making that the focus all through life: that is the thing you get from doing what would otherwise look a lot like working yourself to death...
Helpful?
Daniel |