Motherhood versus Career in Inside My Head

  • Sept. 12, 2014, 1:44 p.m.
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  • Public

In other news besides my pregnancy, I will have a new job. I’m a physician assistant (P.A.) in a neurosurgery ICU. I’ve working at my current job for four and a half years. I work three 12-hour shifts per week and cover nights, holidays, and weekends. When I originally started working the schedule wasn’t bad. Every six weeks we were on a week or a week and a half of night shifts. We covered two weekends every six weeks. It was manageable. Then my chief P.A. Kelly got married to a doctor about two years ago. She started taking herself off the schedule slowly because hell, she clearly no longer needs the money. Then she became per diem, which essentially means that she was making 1.5x my salary, but was working half the hours. Our nights and holiday coverage increased. Then she started putting us on Friday nights, but not working on Saturday or Sunday nights, which essentially meant that I spent half of my “off” weekend sleeping. PAs started to leave last spring and normally empty positions got replaced right away. They’d start looking for candidates within a week. However, as of last spring, as PAs left they were not replaced. I started to get a bad feeling about the future of our program, but I was newly pregnant and if I left the hospital I would lose all maternity benefits. As a hardworking loyal employee of almost five years I deserved those benefits and was going to be damned if I gave them up. More PAs left. We used to have four or five PAs covering both of our ICUs plus the floors; now we had two or three.

I recently spoke to one of the internal medicine doctors and asked about tentatively switching to another department. It’s a pay cut, but Michael just got a raise and the hours are Monday to Friday between 7am-3pm or 8am-4pm. I have to work one weekend per month but I will get two weekdays off the following week in return. I interviewed and got the job. It really really sucks about the pay cut, but I essentially got a new job with better hours and did not have to forgo any of my hospital health or maternity benefits.

I was going to start the new job after I came back from maternity leave in May, but Kelly recently posted the new schedule and it’s not only completely unfair, but also incredibly unsafe. I am on half a dozen shifts covering both ICUs plus the floor patients completely alone. I worked so hard for my license; I refuse to put it in danger because the administration refuses to staff us appropriately. I cannot cover 20+ ICU patients, plus floor patients, plus consults plus admissions and discharges along. It’s not a question if a mistake will happen; it’s a question of how many and when. If I get named in a lawsuit, complaining that we were understaffed is not really a good excuse. So I quit. As of October 16th, I am no longer an ICU PA. I worked in the ICU since 2009; I never thought I’d work anywhere else. I didn’t really want to work anywhere else but the administration has given me no other option. They are putting myself and by colleagues in blatantly unsafe situations, increasing my stress level and the physical demands of my job, and possibly endangering a pregnancy that Michael and I put ourselves through so much to obtain. Kelly send an email two days after I gave my notice claiming “that she can’t handle the workload while pregnant (she’s 47) and is being put on strict bedrest.” Though I don’t doubt that she is a high risk patient due to her age, I find the timing of her leave mighty convenient. Plus she’s still getting paid her ridiculously bloated salary. Plus she had no problem putting my on half a dozen shifts completely by myself while I’m pregnant.

To add insult to injury, only one of my four attendings wished me good luck when I gave my notice. The other three (two of which I’ve worked for since I was hired) couldn’t even be bothered to respond. I don’t know why that hurts, but it does. I know I’m not friends with my bosses, but I have been a loyal, hardworking employee for many years. They have given me merit raises in the past, so it’s not like they though I was a crummy employee. I gave five weeks notice and didn’t have to; since I’m not leaving the hospital and only transferring departments I could’ve really fucked them over and only given 24 hours notice. Dr. Vee (the head of the department) offered office jobs to the last two senior PAs who recently just quit. Meanwhile, he didn’t even bother to respond to my e-mail.

I worked for the past six years to build up my career. I told myself that establishing myself in my career was more important that having a baby right out of school. In the end, I ended up as an internal medicine PA. Internal medicine is respectable, but not quite as prestigious or lucrative as a neurosurgery ICU PA. I feel like I could’ve saved myself the hassle and just been an internal medicine PA from the beginning. I could’ve had babies much earlier. I feel like I pursued the wrong things. People always encourage their daughters that they can do anything; I feel like that’s a lie. As a woman who is or wants to become a mother, you have to decide which takes priority - motherhood or career? For me there was never any choice. I want to see this baby every day. I don’t want to be away from it while I’m off doing twelve hour shifts, or on nights. I want it to wake up and see my face. My father once told me that “If you fuck up as a parent there is nothing in your life that you can accomplish that will make up for that.” I truly believe in that statement. So my career and ego are going to take a hit. Michael’s career is flourishing, and will continue to flourish because he doesn’t have to make the same sacrifices that I have. I’m not mad or resentful of the baby by any means; I just wish I hadn’t worked on a career for so many years when in the end, it sort of fell apart anyway.


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