>> Where's the balloons?
I need some balloons, some confetti, some fireworks.
I have quit my job as an anesthesiologist.
[upbeat music]
As you guys know,
I do take a lot of pride
in my ability to be a lot of things,
wear so many different hats.
And here we are with me making a video
about how I have quit my job as an anesthesiologist.
Although this is something
that I've been strongly considering
for at least one year, as you know,
medicine is a changing landscape.
The pandemic has shifted everything.
And because of certain circumstances,
especially with regards to the field of anesthesia,
and if you're an anesthesiologist, or a CRNA,
or an AA yourself,
you may also be faced with this currently,
or find that this is at your doorstep.
Sometimes places get shut down because of COVID
or there are lockdowns or things like that.
And where you may normally have worked
as an anesthesia provider is no longer having cases.
Surgeries, ORs are not functioning, that sort of thing.
And it became very apparent
to the company that I worked for,
I am a private practice anesthesiologist,
that the company that I worked for needed to shift things
in order to move manpower around,
especially in a region or territory
in order to best utilize services
without having people on the clock, not doing anything.
So basically, what has transpired over the past two years
is a shift to anesthesia being sort of a mobile job.
And this is something that,
although I think it's very smart
from a business perspective,
it's something that no longer worked for me
and my lifestyle.
Really, I have been considering a shift
to doing something more,
what most lay people would consider to be
freelance anesthesia.
It's not called that, but we'll get into that.
A bunch of us were asked to be able to move
all around the town, and sometimes multiples places a day,
and/or sometimes not knowing where you're going
until like, 8:00 the night before,
and it might be literally 45 minutes away the next day.
And basically, I said no.
I still am on good terms with my company.
I still want to be able to help them out.
And I basically shifted my status from full-time
to something called PRN,
which in healthcare speak means, as needed.
What that means for me is I can now work
when I want to.
I might be asked to work at one site, you know,
one day or the next day or in the future.
And that is my goal, is to keep working
as an anesthesiologist.
I'm not quitting the field of anesthesia,
but I do have more flexibility,
more free time to pursue my creative passions,
which you may have kind of,
sort of gotten the hint of
over these past few weeks in my videos.
I've been putting out a lot more content lately.
I have been happier.
I am escaping something that was really dragging me down.
I still love the people that I worked with.
I love the hospitals that I worked at,
the surgery centers that I worked at,
and I still want to continue working there,
because they were amazing.
They're such wonderful places to receive care,
so much so that that's where I received my own care.
It's, you know, it's where I've had my children.
So I desperately, with all my heart,
miss all of the nurses, surgical techs, surgeons
that I worked with on a daily basis at my places of work.
But unfortunately, because of these changing times,
there was some things being asked to me
that I just couldn't do.
I just couldn't do them.
Unfortunately, with things being in this environment
where I didn't know where I would be going the next day,
I just said, "You know what?
This was the impetus I needed to move on."
And so I am free, [chuckles] free to do freelance work,
which in the medical field is called locum tenens.
And it's a Latin term,
which I have no idea actually what it means,
but I think it,
I'll put it here, cause I used to know it,
but I don't know what anymore,
but basically what that means is I am freelance.
So I might pinch hit. Pitch hit? Pinch hit?
Does anyone know, is it pinch hit or pitch hit?
I've always wondered that, but I've never looked it up.
Let's look it up. Pinch hitter. Yeah, pinch.
Basically, what this means is I will be available
through various agencies, and including my former job
where I worked for more than four years,
to be available as needed.
So whenever there is a shortage of an anesthesiologist,
whenever a facility has someone sick
or whenever they have someone, like,
on maternity leave or on vacation and they need,
you know, patients still need surgery,
I can like, pinch hit.
So I can like, kind of like, accept a job,
and I'll go there for either a couple of days,
or maybe a couple of weeks, or maybe just one day
and to kind of like, you know,
show up and be an anesthesiologist,
and like, love my job and love what I do,
but have the freedom to say no,
and take a job only when I want to.
So that has really been, like, my dream for the past year.
I haven't told you guys this,
but it has been a dream of mine since before I had Juliet.
My goal was, I want to create a life
where this will be possible and I want to manifest that.
And this was sort of like, God, to me, saying,
"This is that chance. You need to take it."
And, I did.
So, I am officially a like, let's call it freelance,
cause I love that term.
I just think it's so fun.
But I am a freelance anesthesiologist now,
which means I might show up, you know, at one place,
a random place, any time.
And any time, if you, by the way, watching this,
have need of anesthesia services in the Houston area,
and you need someone that can pinch hit,
you know, reach out.
So I'm very excited.
It's just an exciting chapter for the Braly family.
I have felt so good over the past few weeks.
This all kind of started happening right around
after the new year.
And I have just, I am just so much happier.
I am so much happier.
I can't even tell you how much happier I am
to be kind of free of something
that was really constricting me energetically.
I kind of feel like it's very hard to let go of something,
especially a secure, stable, full-time job as a doctor,
like, who in their right mind would give that up?
Let's be clear.
I'm not giving medicine or anesthesia up at all.
Rather, I am just shifting how I approach
the days that I work and when I work.
So as we open up with travel,
I want more flexibility to take my kids places.
I want to travel.
And that is super hard unless you're, you know,
like, a PRN anesthesiologist.
It's very hard in anesthesia
because manpower is such an issue.
We had to schedule our vacations
sometimes up to like, 14 to 18 months in advance.
And if you needed to change things or if you needed to,
like, if something came up,
you had to like, physically switch with someone
because manpower is so tight
and these companies are run so, so, so tight.
Personnel, manpower, if you're in any kind of industry
where manpower is like, a major issue,
I know that you'll feel me on this.
This is not the only industry where it's like this.
I mean, think about like, airlines,
think about transportation.
Think of any of those things, hospitality,
you need bodies, right?
And so I totally understand that,
but I just, was something that, you know,
that was very limiting.
The fact that I was trying to launch a business, which,
you know, I worked on for a year,
but it really kind of hit me like lightning
when I decided to do it, right?
So, you know, the goal has been to really kind of push
everything that I do in this space and even offline.
There are a lot of things that I work on offline
that I don't talk to you guys about.
And I think that that is really kind of taking a front seat
for now.
And I'm very happy about that
because that's what I've wanted to do for a very long time.
I have wanted to be able to be in a position
where I absolutely love anesthesia,
and I would never want to give that up.
I think that it is a true passion of mine,
but what I found I was chafing against
was sort of the rigidity of the job itself
in terms of like, absolutely having no flexibility
to do this or that.
And I was really struggling with those
in terms of being able to do what I want to do creatively.
I was really chafing against
that restrictive nature of like, a normal job. [chuckles]
I mean, this would apply to any job,
not just the field of anesthesia, right,
any like, nine-to-five job.
You could see even, I told you guys, I shifted my hours.
I came back from maternity leave last year.
Going down from 40 hours a week to 30 hours a week,
I thought, you know, "That's great.
Like, that's all I need. That's going to be perfect.
And then I'll go back up to 40 if I need to."
And I still found myself struggling with burnout,
with whatever.
I mean, it was just, you know,
I think the pandemic has really affected a lot of people,
but particularly healthcare workers, nurses, techs, doctors,
surgeons, anesthesiologists, CRNAs AAs, all of us.
We have been really, really, really hit hard
by the pandemic.
And I read a really interesting article,
I think it was the "New York Times,"
that I will link down below,
that just really, really hit home.
And this was already after I'd already left,
already given my notice to my job
that I was transitioning to an as-needed basis.
But I really felt like, yeah, this is,
I felt so seen, and so heard by this article,
and from a place that I would never expect.
And I will link it down below,
because if you're in health care,
which I know a lot of you guys are that watch my channel.
But even if you're not, this affects you as a patient too.
Or, if you have family members who are nurses,
or family members who are scrub techs,
or family members who are CNAs or respiratory therapists,
it is affecting everybody.
And I think that it's really important
that we protect ourselves,
protect ourselves mentally, emotionally, physically,
and really know when it's time to just step away
for a little bit and just do things that make us happy.
And in my day-to-day job, when I was doing anesthesia,
when I was administering anesthesia, hands-on, myself,
I am happy.
I love it.
It's like, the biggest privilege and honor
to be able to put someone to sleep,
wake them back up again and have their life in my hands.
It's a very profound honor and privilege,
and something that I've trained
more than a dozen years to do.
So I will never give that up,
because that is what makes me happy as well.
But what I found wasn't making me happy
was all the things that I talked about previously,
which, you know,
I won't rehash because I just talked about it.
But I think healthcare in general has become quite toxic,
especially towards the healthcare worker,
which is like the most ironic thing ever
since we were like healthcare heroes,
like, not that long ago.
And now all of a sudden, it's just, it's crazy to me.
I'm kind of rambling at this point,
cause I don't know what else to say,
except I quit my job. [laughs]
I'm just like, I am so happy.
I get to be with my kids. I get to hang out here.
My lease was up at my other office,
so I will be looking for another place, possibly,
to work out from.
But right now, I'm just back in my home office,
loving life.
I am making content about what I want to make content about.
And it just goes to show that like, you know,
medicine and healthcare,
they're not the only things that define your personality.
And I hope by now,
if you've been watching me for any period of time
that you understand that,
that at least my channel can show
that you can have passions and interests
outside of healthcare,
and pursue them and feel like this one thing
that I spent a large chunk of my life towards
is not wasted in any way.
It doesn't define me. It doesn't make me who I am.
It's just a job that is perfect for me,
for who I am, and how I think,
and how I approach problems,
and how I approach stressful situations.
It was the perfect job
and is still the perfect job for me.
But it doesn't mean it's the only job for me.
By now, you will know that about me.
But not only that,
but if you are studying to be a nurse,
studying to be a doctor,
studying to be a respiratory therapist,
studying to be a surgical technologist, all of these things,
it doesn't define who you are as a person.
And I think a lot of times,
healthcare workers can get wrapped up in the identity
and the ideology of healthcare and medicine,
and it's being "a calling" and everything like that.
And while I do think it is a calling,
it also doesn't mean that you have to set yourself on fire
to keep other people warm.
And you also need to still put yourself first,
and that it's okay to leave.
And it's also okay to pursue other things
that are not at all related to what you do.
For me, you know,
it became quite clear that the rigidity
of the way that our system works,
particularly in the field of anesthesia,
was not working for me anymore.
And this pandemic, again,
just like for many healthcare workers,
kind of like sharpened that to a tipping point.
And it just became no longer
something that I wanted to do anymore.
So, I'm really happy.
You know, where's the balloons?
I need some balloons, some confetti, some fireworks.
I am happy.
I'm so excited about this new journey
that 2022 has like, thrown at us.
It's very exciting.
I'm going to be putting out a lot more content.
I'm also going to be starting a membership to my channel.
There are going to be a lot of fun perks
and things that are just ways for me
to give back to you guys, who I appreciate,
because I certainly would not feel
as comfortable doing this,
if it weren't for the support of you guys
that I have here on this channel.
You guys are a huge reason why Cloud9 has been a success,
why this YouTube channel has been a success,
and why I'm even able to feel comfortable
doing something like this.
And so I feel like being able to support my family,
while also doing the thing that I love is just the dream.
If anything, a takeaway message from this video
is that you need to carve out your career.
And it doesn't always look like everybody else's,
and that's okay.
But you need to find what works,
and be okay with taking only the things that bring you joy
and doing those things.
And if that means that you, for example, like me,
I enjoy creating content so much, like so, so much.
And I probably wouldn't be in this position
if it weren't for the fact that I've stumbled
across this world while studying medicine,
because I wanted an escape from studying medicine,
even though I loved it.
It's okay to realize that, okay,
for me, I love doing anesthesia,
but I like doing it when I want to do it.
And so I'm doing that.
And I have found like, this surge in energy
that I've been missing over the last year and a half,
to be honest with you.
I felt like that pep in my step has been gone for a while.
And it's returning.
Slowly but surely, over the last couple of weeks,
I've felt like, I mean, those days where I'll just work
until 11:00 at night in my office, like,
working on thumbnails, content planning,
ideas are just pouring out of me.
I already have another business project idea that, you know,
hopefully in a year or so, or less,
I can share with you guys.
Even though I wanted to do this ages ago, ages ago.
But sometimes it just takes a leap of faith
and something to really kind of like be like,
"Yep. Okay.
All right, God, this is you telling me this is that time."
And sometimes you just have to follow
what he is telling you.
And I'm doing that. And so I'm very excited about it.
I hope that you enjoyed it, this video,
at least found it interesting.
I know that it's sort of a, whoa, like, "Ah!"
But trust me when I say it's going to be
quite possibly the best thing for me and my family,
at least for the coming year.
Who knows?
I mean, will I get swept up by some place
that I end up working at for a short-term
and then decide I want to work there full time?
Or, you know, this is a fluid situation.
It's very possible that in a few years from now,
I'll be back at work full-time.
I'm not intending this to be something that I do
for the rest of my life,
but this is just what I want and need right now.
And the beauty of this is that I can shift this
however I want.
So if I say, if I decide that I miss
a consistent, steady schedule in anesthesia,
then I can do anesthesia again full-time.
It's so nice to be able to have the choice,
and I think, the freedom and flexibility.
So like, choice, freedom and flexibility
were really like, the biggest things.
And that's sort of like,
if you saw my bullet journal set up,
which is my planner for the year, it's freedom to fly.
And I really want to like,
spread my wings and see how far I can go
with my creative outlets and my business ideas,
and just my desire to produce things.
I want to create things. I want to create content.
I love creating, whether it's virtual content
or whether it's products.
Like, I just, there's so much I have in my head,
that I just need to pick out of the air in my,
in this cloud above me of ideas.
I could just, literally, have 20 at any given time.
And just depends on what I want to focus my energy on.
And I'm very excited to try that out.
So we'll see how it goes. Thanks so much for watching.
If you enjoyed this video,
I'd love to chat with you in the comments to see, like,
what questions you have about this.
I'm sure there are a lot of burning questions like,
"Whoa, what's, you know how's-"
If you have any questions,
I'd be happy to answer any of them at all,
down in the comments.
I love having a nice discourse with you guys.
So, I'll see you in the comments.
Thanks for watching. Bye.