Physician-moms carry the weight of the world on their shoulders

<p>"As women physicians, especially physician-moms and women physicians of color, we have handled and achieved more than the vast majority of the population, in order to reach our current status of physician.</p> <p>We do because we can.</p> <p>We are Superwomen. Until we’re not.</p> <p>Without thought, we take on others’ responsibilities, because we can.</p> <p>In addition to our own personal responsibility to ourselves and to our loved ones, we take on the responsibilities of our patients’ well-being, the failures of dysfunctional medical and political systems, and even the disastrous effects of diseases, such as COVID-19.</p> <p>Our patients hand over their poor health to us, and we accept it.</p> <p>Our dysfunctional medical systems hand over their inadequacies to us, and we accept them.</p> <p>We carry the weight of the world on our shoulders. Because we can.</p> <p>Until we cannot."</p> <p><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/rebeccaelia/" target= "_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Rebecca Elia</a> is an obstetrics-gynecology physician and physician coach. She can be reached at her self-titled site, <a href= "https://www.rebeccaelia.com/" target="_blank" rel= "nofollow noopener noreferrer">Rebecca Elia, MD</a>.</p> <p>She shares her story and discusses her KevinMD article, "What does it mean to be responsible during the COVID-19 pandemic?" (<a href= "https://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2020/06/what-does-it-mean-to-be-responsible-during-the-covid-19-pandemic.html">https://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2020/06/what-does-it-mean-to-be-responsible-during-the-covid-19-pandemic.html</a>)</p>