“It is the task of the enlightened not only to ascend to learning and to see the good but to be willing to descend again to those prisoners and to share their troubles and their honors, whether they are worth having or not.”~Plato
Who am I and what’s the point?
I am a sinner saved by grace. A husband married to a saint. Father of three. A philosopher. An author. An inventor. And I happen to be a physician anesthesiologist in academia.
What you want to know is that I am a fellow journeyman. Maybe more like the prisoner that was freed from Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. My job? It is to come back and teach others what I have learned.
The road to burnout is really what helped me find my purpose on this site: teaching others how to obtain financial independence (FI) and use that as a tool to escape burnout.
How it all started
While in fellowship for regional anesthesia, a few books and a couple of conversations opened my eyes to the fact that I accrued way more debt than I should have in training, but (despite that) I could still be financially independent in my early 40’s.
Throughout my training, there were so many fundamental (non-medical) things that people failed to teach me. I don’t want that to happen to you. That’s what this website is about.
If you want to know more about my background growing up the ups and downs of going through bankruptcy as a kid and where my hatred from debt came from, you can read My Blogging Manifesto: Part 1.
What are the goals?
Along the way, I was constantly seeking words of wisdom as I didn’t know many people who had taken the same journey, certainly not in my family. This led me to internet forums and blogging sites for specific needs.
As for the goals of this site, I want to help those in training and those who have just finished figure out how to obtain their wealth without forgetting the “why,” which is to obtain a life well lived (i.e. wellness)! On this site, I focus more on financial independence as a tool to help obtain wellness.
You can read more about my posting schedule here.
If you’d like to consider becoming a sponsor of The Physician Philosopher, click here.
What can you expect to read?
Along the way, I suspect you’ll read one of four categories:
- Document my journey in my accumulation of wealth and my destroying of debt. You can read my networth updates here: Net Worth Update 1 (six months out from training); Net Worth Update 2.
- Give advice that I wish I had received along the way.
- Discuss the ethics and passions of physicians and the important topics that lie therein (physician burnout, compassion fatigue, suicide, etc). This can be found mostly in my Wednesday Wellness posts.
- To describe the journey of becoming a physician and the people that come along with you on that journey (significant others, children, colleagues, peers, etc).
Those that know me in real life know that I am a straight-shooter. My hope is that people reading this website will receive advice, help, and some camaraderie that they may be lacking.
TPP
Given the lack of continuity of an anesthesiologist’s role, do you consider them to be physicians or more as a technician? (somewhat like a radiologist who has very limited pt contact and almost no continuity as well)
Hence no long lasting patient/doctor relationship.
Definitely physician more than technician. We don’t have as much continuity as surgeons do, but you better believe they love the fact that we exist and the amount of medicine that we know. We essentially serve as an intensivist, pharamcist, and cardiologist all rolled into one package.