Self Care In The Field Of Medicine

By: Sabila Siddiqui

By the demands of our life, we lose in touch with our emotions – feel our inner selves drifting away to the point of alienation. We are unable to craft out the time to untangle the muddled mess we’ve become without stressors looming over our minds.

Our to-do lists start getting longer; higher amounts of cortisol start rushing through our system while we gulp down another mug of coffee in an effort to buy more time or merely give our self a sense that we’re coping.

We give in to the enormous stress the profession we choose entails and find less time to care for our mental and physical health thereby deteriorating in various aspects – especially mentally.

As medical students, the acts we integrate into our daily lives become stepping stone habits to a healthier lifestyle or merely a better way to cope with the demands in our journey from medical students to medical professionals.

We learn how cultivating a sense of self-awareness can prove beneficial in recognizing what infuses our life with joy and what drains our energy, but also practice discipline in an attempt to be consistent in what serves us and have the grace to let go of what doesn’t.

We learn to delegate and prioritize as we become selective of our energy and time. We learn to turn down the volume of our environment and focus on our inner voice. We realize a hiatus is as necessary as moving forward. We realize we deserve to experience joy and peace – in our own ways. We learn we all have different circumstances, motivations, reasons, pace and how effort looks different on all of us.

We realize that to adopt a multitude of self-care behaviors & practices at this phase of our lives can build greater resilience to cope later in the future and become better health professionals.

We realize there are days when self-nurture seem to be an added point onto the exhaustive list, when we are unable to find time to fit in our time-consuming craft of peace.

These are the days we realize that merely mindful, self-supporting mental attitude can go a long way. How the intention of self-care etched to a simple act can prove to make all the difference.

Sabila a desert-raised islander with her roots in Pakistan. She values the importance of outreach in medical care and has journeyed to the wondrous world of writing; letting her words take the forms of poetry, short stories and articles. She believes in the importance of empathy, social justice, advocacy of mental health care and the need for puns and memes to enlighten one’s spirit. When she’s not glued to a screen or a textbook, she can be found volunteering, illustrating, clicking the world and indulging in an entertaining book while sipping on green tea and possibly imagining herself surrounded by cats.

She can be reached on Instagram via @sabila.siddiqui – give her a follow!

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