A recently retired DO shares what motivated her to take the next step confidently

For any retirement journey, there is a beginning, a middle and an end. My beginning started approximately 10 years ago, but I officially began my “Back Nine” on June 28, 2024. Hopefully, the end will not be for many years. I will never know when I am in the middle of the journey. “Better make hay while the sun shines,” as my maternal grandmother used to say.

As I was thinking about my approach to the Back Nine, I formulated what I call the “5 M’s of retirement”—

1. Motive: Why physicians choose to retire
2. Money: Determining when you will have enough funds to retire and what your retirement lifestyle will look like
3. Milestones: Deciding what to do about board certifications, licenses, hospital privileges, medical/surgical associations and journal commitments
4. Meaning: Discovering new/other meanings in our lives
5. Matters Most: Learning what is most important to us during this journey

The idea for the 5 M’s of retirement was born out of the 5 M’s of geriatrics. The geriatric 5 M’s provide a framework to improve the care of older adults. I was looking for a way to incorporate important aspects of retirement in a succinct way. “Matters Most,” the fifth M of geriatrics, I kept here as well.

In future articles in The DO, I hope to explore these 5 M’s further using my own experiences as well as observations of other physicians. Today, we will focus on the first “M”: motive.

Reasons to retire

There are a multitude of reasons to enter the Back Nine. Sometimes it is the natural progression of our career, sometimes tragedy or health issues make it necessary to retire and other times family obligations or current work conditions make the transition necessary.

Most of us do not wake up one day and let our employer (if applicable) and our patients know that we are leaving medicine that day. Many physicians have had days when we have considered that, but I digress.

I find it difficult to articulate my motive for retiring. For me, it was a hodgepodge of things coming together when they did that made me take concrete steps to plan my retirement.

My journey

In the early days of my journey in medicine, I was preoccupied with the challenges of medical school, the wonder and excitement of medicine, the all-consuming life of internal medicine (IM) residency and geriatrics fellowship, all infused with exhaustion—reasonable from the lens of my rose-colored glasses of memory.

I loved providing medical care to people in their own environments in Manhattan. It is one thing to prescribe medication to patients in the office, and it is another to see the home circumstances in which they keep and take those medications. Each home visit provided opportunities for teaching not just about medications, but other things like fall prevention and advance directives. It was an honor to have patients welcome me into their homes. Home visits were one of the highlights of my career.

Ten years before retirement I began to periodically think more about retirement. I was working in home hospice at the time and too often I would see newly retired hospice patients who were dying—never having had a chance to enjoy their retirement. Each time this happened to someone in my orbit, I would wonder if that would be my experience too.

Learning how to enjoy a balanced life as a physician is a vital component of taking care of others and contributes to high-functioning health care systems. It is a skill that a great deal of us, including me, never learned, and it was starting to take a toll. Part of my motivation for retiring when I did was because of the chronic stress I was under. I didn’t manage it well, and I eventually felt I needed to leave medicine to make sure I didn’t miss out on my retirement.

I had also tried better stress management, eating better and incorporating more physical activity, but my efforts were short-lived and never became habits. I finally made the decision to officially retire so that I could fully enjoy my back nine.

Bidding farewell to medicine

In numerous ways, medicine was an ideal career for me. I loved the patients and families, training residents and fellows, the academic stimulation, making a difference in people’s lives, the continuous learning and keeping my mind sharp.

However, at some point medicine and my day-to-day work began losing their luster. The “paperwork” got to be overwhelming and too time-consuming. In the end, the never-ending challenges of my daily work made it impossible for me to continue to practice medicine. It was my biggest motivation for retiring.  

Once I retired, I needed to let go (albeit very slowly) of the drive, the goals and the pushing, and just be.

Now that I am retired, I am finding new things that motivate me to enjoy each day. In my very early retirement, I went on the longest vacation I had ever had. I loved not having to be anywhere in particular and having fewer responsibilities. I was looking forward to re-engaging in previously enjoyed hobbies and discovering new ones. I have enjoyed spending more time with my partner and not setting the alarm. Several months after retirement, I joined a local club of Toastmasters, an international public speaking group, as well. I never had the time or energy to do this while I was working.

In my next column, I will be addressing “Money,” the second M of retirement. Please join me through the Back Nine.

Related reading:

6 questions to ask yourself when you’re thinking about retiring from medicine

Denouement: How life evolves after you retire from medicine