The Case of Anita Rao: Defining a Career and a Self

Abstract

The journey of medical education and training involves multiple career-defining decisions. The inflexible and rigorous schedule of this journey and diversity of choices create a series of pressured decisions that must often be made with limited time and information. These decisions are often career-defining, meaning they lead to a specific path from which it becomes difficult to impossible to continue the pursuit of other interests both in medicine and in one's personal life. As such, these decisions can feel weighty and monumental, affecting and affected by the development of professional identity in the trainee. Professional identity formation is a fraught process that necessitates the integration of a fully formed adult self with the trainee's new identity as a physician. This chapter examines some aspects of the stresses that career-defining decisions can place on a trainee's developing sense of her professional self and values. It presents a case study of a 31-year-old internal medicine resident who requested treatment through her hospital's house staff wellness and mental health program and was referred to a senior psychiatrist on the hospital faculty, with the chief complaint of 'I don't know what to do with my life!'. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved)