The Making of A Doctor: An Interview with Dr. Lise Alexander

TC:  How many kids do you have?

LA:  I have two. When I started medical school my daughter was five and my son was nine. So, it was perfect timing for me. The kids were established. They were doing well in school. I could sort of slowly start working my way back into my career. And now they're eleven and sixteen and getting ready to step out the door and my career's getting ready to take off too. So, for me it's been perfect in terms of blending my family and my career. It just took me a while to get there. In many ways it just wasn't a choice. It was something that just kept bugging me and bugging me until I confronted it. And when I confronted it and addressed the dream, it became clear that this was what I was destined to do.

TC:  And now you're a third-year resident?

LA:  Yes.

TC:  Tell me about the first year.

LA:  Well, let me step back just a little bit further. First of all, medical school was not easy for me. As a single mom at the time, you know, it was academically really challenging. And I knew starting school in my head that I wasn't going to be in the upper ninety-percent. But I'd get my scores back and I'd passed, but it would be extraordinarily unspectacular. And it just went to the heart. And it took a long time for my ego to accept that, you know, seventy five, eight percent was OK. Happy kids and seventy five and eighty percent is OK.

I was a good enough medical student. I don't know if you've heard the phrase "a good enough parent" – it's a parenting method. But, I was a good enough medical student. But it was a very humbling experience. And so I started my residency program and my first year was hard. It was exhausting. We are on call eight months of the thirteen-month year every fourth night. That's a lot of call. That's a lot of nights. And then the other five months we don't have call, but you're still pretty busy. You're adjusting to managing patients a lot more independently, and you're learning time management, learning to see more patients more often. You're adjusting to making decisions, sometimes without the benefit of advice due to time, the fact that you need to get stuff done. And in one sense it's incredibly exhilarating. And in another sense it's incredibly frightening. And I think that most interns do a really good job of knowing where their limitations are and asking for advice when they need it. It was a very humbling experience for me in terms of the exhaustion level and the responsibility level. And it was a very exhilarating experience in terms of the successes that I experienced as a provider for people.

As a third-year now, I actually have patients who see me regularly starting to complain because they can't see me often enough. My schedule gets booked up so far in advance that they get frustrated, which is a great feeling. It's really sweet. And they really like what I seem to offer. And it's an honor that people come back and see you. I have this one patient – I was working with him on his depression and we got into a good space for him where he was doing well and I was seeing him monthly for a period of several months, just checking in and making sure that he was responding to medications and feeling like he was making progress. And he was doing well. And I said, "Well, you know, I think we're at a point where if you only wanted to come every two or three months, we could do that. I'm sure you have other things you'd like to be doing besides seeing your doctor." And he said, "No, I want to keep seeing you once a month." It's like, wow! Hey, he didn't really have a need. It was important to him to touch base with me. And that really meant a lot to me, that this guy's willing to take three buses to come in and see me once a month for fifteen minutes. And that was important to him. And important enough that he wasn't willing to step back. So, it is an honor. It is humbling to think I am making a difference in people's lives, and he was making great, phenomenal changes in his life and making good progress on issues that he had spent years not addressing.

And I've had little changes like that, and managing people's health care, getting their meds adjusted so they're easier for them to take. It's amazing to me how little things can make a huge difference in peoples' lives in terms of their healthcare. Adjusting the medication, or providing them with a counselor to help address their issues, or getting them hooked up with a financial connection that might help them get the taxi service that they need to see the doctor can make a huge difference in their healthcare all around. And, I think that the lesson I've learned as a resident is that being a doctor is not rocket science. It doesn't take a brilliant person to be a doctor. What it takes is good listening skills and ability to figure out what that particular individual needs to solve that particular problem.