Category: Physician Wellness

July 26, 2021

by drplasticpicker

LOL. That’s an awfully witty blog title Dr. Plastic Picker. How many clicks do you think it will garner? As this blog is non-monetized and completely for my own amusement and to keep me on track on my environmental advocacy, it does somewhat matter. The HMO Family Practice residents are descending upon pediatrics today and I am making vegan banana beer bread with coconut oil and extra dash of cinnamon and extra splash of vanilla extract. I even added in some coarsely chopped walnuts, I was feeling so fancy. I used one of Mr. Plastic Picker’s fancy IPA beers for the recipe. It essentially cost me nothing as I had all the ingredients already and a lot of overripe bananas.

I referred back to this recipe on this blog but used just bananas and not mangos. https://drplasticpicker.com/banana-mango-beer-bread-re-imagining-a-bad-costco-mango/ I also bought a bag of fancy granola from Costco. Otherwise these days instead of spending $150 on meat-filled breakfast sandwhich box from Einstein Bagels, I just made it simple. I just contribute when asked and do what brings me joy which was grabbing something simple at Costco and averting foodwaste and doubling a recipe. Half of this bananas beer bread will stay home, and half will come to clinic for the residents.

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June 14, 2021

by drplasticpicker

I created a little seating area on the 2nd floor balcony off the game room. It’s a balcony that overlooks our backyard and I can see the amazing container garden and outside living area we’ve created on the concrete parking pad that used to house the Honda Odyssey Minivan. Selling the minivan was overall positive for our financial bottom line because it was an extra car we did not need and helped avert some carbon emissions, but it ended up having a cascading effect in our lives that we never imagined.

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June 6, 2021

by drplasticpicker

I was having a conversation with a wonderful person the other day. We talked about wellness and physican burnout, and just catching up with eachother in life. But even wonderful people (including Dr. Plastic Picker) sometimes we have comments and snippets of conversations that are not helpful about others. I used to be a culprit. I’m not sure if I was worse than others, but certainly party to it too. Everytime I talk to this particular person or think about about 4 pediatricians in our group that came from the same department before they reached our HMO, I am reminded what a culture of bullying does to a group of young physicians. I am not sure what was exactly going on at the local children’s hospital in town in the emergency room, but it was toxic. Toxic enough that we had a mass migration and mass attempted migration of pediatricians into our HMO. We needed per diems at that time, but not that many phyisicans. As is with the nature of things, some we hired. Some work part-time. And some went on to other cities and hopefully went on to have solid careers.

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