We talk a lot on Earn and Invest about the exit strategy. We dissect burnout, we map out financial independence, and we celebrate the moment someone finally pulls the trigger on their traditional career. Because I walked away from my full-time medical practice, people often make a natural assumption: Doc G must have hated being a doctor.
But that couldn’t be further from the truth.
I didn’t leave medicine because I hated the work. In fact, there were parts of it I loved deeply—parts that defined who I am today. In this solo episode, I wanted to set the record straight and look back at the ten specific things that made being a physician one of the most gratifying experiences of my life.
The Anatomy of a Profession
When I look back at the daily grind of clinic lines, hospital rounds, and nursing home visits, it wasn’t the paycheck that kept me showing up. It was the sheer, raw nature of the work itself.
Here are the pieces of the practice I genuinely miss:
The Brutal Difficulty: Medicine is hard. It requires years of rigorous, exhausting training just to become competent. Fighting complex medical battles and facing that daily intellectual challenge was incredibly exciting.
Playing Detective: I loved the cognitive puzzle. Using diagnostic algorithms, asking structured questions, and gathering data to solve complex physiological mysteries made it a true “thinking man’s profession.”
The Physicality: I wasn’t trapped behind a desk. I was constantly moving between offices and hospital wings. Coming home with sore muscles and physical exhaustion felt deeply earned.
The Variety: Every single day was different. Even when dealing with the same common illnesses, the human condition ensures that no disease presents the exact same way twice. Every patient brought a fresh, unique story.
The Raw Edges of Humanity
More than the science, though, medicine was a masterclass in humanity. It forced me out of my bubble and dropped me right into the middle of the real world.
I loved the people. The job required me to interact with patients from every imaginable race, culture, and socioeconomic background. It completely shattered my narrow views and broadened my worldview.
It allowed me to witness the absolute grit of humanity. As a doctor, you are invited into the rawest, most unguarded edges of human existence. Yes, it sometimes resulted in personal trauma and signs of PTSD. But being present for life’s most intense moments—from profound sorrow to immense love and joy—was a privilege.
It built profound compassion in me. Seeing people endure terrible suffering at their most vulnerable moments taught me to be empathetic. I realized that when people are miserable or mean, it is rarely personal; it is almost always a trauma response reflecting the difficult things they are going through.
The Practical Truths
Of course, there were structural benefits to the career that are hard to match in any other field:
The Inherent Perks of the Medical Profession
├── Absolute Job Security (Immune to economic downturns and AI threats)
├── Financial Security (A built-in guarantee of a high income)
└── Social Standing (An inherent cultural respect earned through brutal hard work)
The Real Culprit behind the Burnout
So, if I loved the difficulty, the people, the puzzle, and the security... why did I burn out?
In the after-show of this episode, I dive into the vital missing context of my career—which happens to be the core focus of my book, The Healthcare Heist.
The enemy wasn’t the patient, and it wasn’t the medicine. The enemy was the system. Third-party entities—pharmaceutical companies, private equity firms, insurers, and electronic medical record corporations—have systematically extracted immense profits from healthcare while purposefully pitting doctors against patients.
Basic legislation isn’t going to fix this broken machinery. What we need is a grassroots revolution where the true stakeholders—the patients and the healthcare providers—unite through shared storytelling to demand real change.
Looking Ahead
Stepping away from full-time medicine didn’t mean retiring my mind; it just meant redirecting that energy. I’m incredibly excited to share that I have two more books currently in the works. Look out for The Happiness Code next March, followed by a deeply personal book focusing on death and dying, slated for publication with Johns Hopkins University Press.
If you’ve ever wondered how you can love your profession but still feel compelled to leave it, this episode is for you.
What about your own career? What are the parts you genuinely love—and what are the systemic forces making you want to walk away? Let’s talk about it in the comments below.
Thanks; sharing this with my son-in-law, a firefighter who is studying to get into med school. As for the question, in my career first creating books and then creating training programs, I loved creating experiences that would help people learn new things, but my love got sucked away when we sold a controlling interest in our company to private equity investors and they insisted that the focus of our work be the pursuit of ever-increasing sales.
I’m 3 months away from stepping back from my supervisory role in radiology. Over the last few months I’ve assessed what I love about the profession I’ve been a part of for 23 years. My answer is patient care. The conversations, the connections, the challenge of performing imaging exams on complex anatomy, the camaraderie of working side by side with my fellow technologists, and the feeling of doing good work - these still keep me engaged. The messiness that is our healthcare system is a game I no longer wish to play.