EP181: Carving Paths: Women's Journeys in Medicine with Dr. Eliza Chin

Medicine and Motherhood with Dr. Eliza Lo Chin

This episode of The Girl Doc Survival Guide features Dr. Eliza Lo Chin, Executive Director of the American Medical Women's Association (AMWA) and former AMWA President. Dr. Chin, an internist with a focus on women's health, shares her personal journey balancing her career, motherhood, and marriage. She discusses the inspiration behind her anthology, 'This Side of Doctoring: Reflections from Women in Medicine,' and reflects on her path to becoming the Executive Director of AMWA. The conversation touches on the challenges of achieving work-life balance, the importance of community and mentorship, and the evolving role of women in medicine. Dr. Chin emphasizes the diverse opportunities available within the medical profession and encourages female physicians to forge their unique paths.

00:00 Introduction and Guest Welcome

00:43 Motherhood and Medicine

01:57 Inspiration Behind the Book

02:58 Challenges and Historical Perspectives

05:47 Path to Leadership in AMWA

08:40 Reflections on Work-Life Balance

10:40 Final Thoughts and Encouragement

Transcript

Christine Ko: [00:00:00] Welcome back to The Girl Doc Survival Guide. Today I am very pleased to be with Dr. Eliza Lo Chin. Dr. Chin is an internist with an interest in women's health. She's the Executive Director of the American Medical Women's Association, or AMWA. Dr. Chin was President of that same organization from 2010 to 2011, and in 2002 she edited the anthology, This Side of Doctoring: Reflections from Women in Medicine, which we'll talk about. She has commented, "Being a young mother, physician, and wife, I found myself perpetually struggling to achieve some semblance of balance in my life." And I would love to talk about that.

Welcome to Eliza. 

Eliza Chin: Thank you so much. It's such an honor to be on the show. 

Christine Ko: Are you able to comment on your previous comment about being a young mother, wife, and physician and what it feels like now after you've had many years of practice? 

Eliza Chin: Yeah. I remember those early years and how [00:01:00] just physically exhausting it was. Part of it was my husband was still in training at that time when my kids were young, so I was often on my own, with two kids and only one pair of hands. And I remember thinking to myself, I had so many attendings that I worked with, faculty members, who had two or three kids. Nobody talked to me about how challenging it was to balance career and family. That's what gave me the idea, honestly, for the book, because I read a lot of books about motherhood. There was that great Chicken Soup for the Soul series. But being a physician mother was different. You couldn't turn it off. You couldn't stop being a physician. When you came home, you often still thought about your patients. Sometimes there was follow-up, there were phone calls, and you couldn't also turn off being a mother when you were at work. And so there was this dual challenge, and I wanted to know how other women physicians were surviving and that's what kind of prompted the idea for the book. 

Christine Ko: What did you find out? 

Eliza Chin: It was [00:02:00] so encouraging. At that time, there wasn't social media. There were very few things written about it. In fact, there was an article that came out in Annals of Internal Medicine called "Doctors' Daughter", written by Dr. Julie McMurray. That was the first time when I thought, Hey, there are people who are interested in talking about this. And that kind of spurred me to really start that book project. And it was so encouraging hearing from women who were also juggling, who talked about the fact that there wasn't a perfect recipe, who told hilarious stories about all the shortcuts they did in parenthood. And I had my own shortcuts. There was a period of time when my kids would go to bed in their clothes that they had to wear the next day because the morning routine sometimes took so long. So it was just great. This connection of women. People can do it now more easily through Facebook and other social media sites. But at that time, it was very hard, and it wasn't written or talked about a lot. It started out [00:03:00] being a book about balancing career and family 'cause that was first and foremost in my mind. I had gone to a medical school that had about 40% women. My residency was also about 40% women. So I had never understood the story of women who were the only one or the one breaking the barriers or going through gender discrimination or even harassment. The book ended up being so much more, about the barriers that many women faced in their struggle as a physician, that may or may not have anything to do with family. So the perspective got a lot larger. And then I started looking at some historical pieces, which I found fascinating, realizing that women physicians have not been around for such a long time, if you think historically. Reading some of the stories and the writings of the pioneer women, many of them, who had written books about their experience and what that was like to go against the family's wishes and forge their own pathway. That opened up a whole new area of interest of mine that I still have [00:04:00] today, on the history of women in medicine, particularly as physicians. 

Christine Ko: I love your tip, your little shortcut. I would do that, too. My daughter thought for a long time it was normal that's what everyone does. And then at some point ,she's, Other people wear pajamas, Mom. I was like, I do know that. Yeah.

Do you think that there is balance? 

Eliza Chin: It's always this elusive something that we chase after. I still struggle with that, honestly. Even now, although it's not so much balancing family, maybe it's balancing career and life in general. But I think it's important, as long as we keep our priorities straight, and as long as I think we find the joy in the simple moments, find the joy at that time, is what's the most important. Otherwise it's really for nothing. You're trying to give yourself fully in one area, and you can't fully do it because you're also trying to give yourself fully in another area. For me, at one point, being able to accept what I could do well and what I couldn't do well. Keeping my house clean and tidy was just never something that I could do well. And of course now my [00:05:00] kids are old enough to comment on that or comment on what it was like. But you do what you can, and I'm always grateful for having had the opportunity to do both. In my work situation, I actually have worked full-time. I worked more than full-time. I've also been completely stay at home for a number of years. I was at home, and then I had many years where I was doing both, working part-time and also just being home. I would show up on the playground in the afternoon with all the other moms because my workday had finished, and then I was like every other mom doing the driving to all the different activities and all the coordination.

Christine Ko: Yeah. It's so funny. I like the way you said, I was like every other mom. ' Cause it's true when I'm with my kids, I'm "just a mom" to them.

Eliza Chin: Yeah.

Christine Ko: Can you talk about your path to becoming the Executive Director of a national organization like AMWA? 

Eliza Chin: So that's interesting. I never would've seen that in my future at all. In fact, [00:06:00] sometimes when I look back, I think, there's no way I saw this path. After I published the anthology, written by so many other people, I had connected with AMWA because of some of the leaders that I met. And so I went to my first meeting in Georgia. Left my husband at home with three kids, poor guy on his own, all under the age of six. And I met such wonderful people and I thought, I've never had a community like this where they're talking about the issues that I'm feeling and experiencing. And so that was my first AMWA meeting, I think, in 2002. I haven't missed a single meeting since then. I got involved, met some folks, became a branch president, got involved in committees and then was on the Board of Directors, working my way up the leadership. I was fascinated, especially about the history, because as I mentioned with the book, I had looked into the history of women in medicine; well, AMWA was a big part of that whole history because they, at that time, had been around like 94, 95 years. And I had done a lot of research at the archives and I knew that [00:07:00] one day I wanted to be president, I just wasn't sure when. And so then an opening kind of happened. I stepped into leadership. And then a few years after I finished my presidency, I stayed very active. When the call came out for an internal executive director, and by that time, I had probably served on almost every committee in AMWA. I had helped in some changes with management companies. I had really invested in the organization. So even though I didn't feel like I had the training in terms of, like, I didn't have an MBA or management degree, I really had the life experience of building and growing the organization. So I stepped into that, and I kept part of my clinical practice and would work part-time in AMWA and just slowly continued to help grow and build the organization. And here we are today, and I've had just some amazing experiences with people that I've gotten to work with, initiatives I've been privileged to be involved with. The exciting thing is to be able to come up with ideas for what needs to change and be able to work with people [00:08:00] to help realize some of those ideas. The past few years we were at the White House for a number of events. And again, just being there with so many others who were working to change healthcare was incredibly inspiring and fulfilling. Sometimes I look back, and I never would've thought graduating from medical school that this was my path. Sometimes I feel like, because I did take time off work, and there was a time when I wasn't sure where my medical career was going, I feel just incredibly lucky and blessed that I managed to forge a path that allowed so much personal fulfillment at the same time and allowed me to take the time off I needed for my family. 

Christine Ko: I'm really inspired by your story and what you've said because it was just one to two years ago that I decided that there's no balance for me. This work-life balance whole concept is a sham, and it puts pressure on me that I'm always failing 'cause there's no balance for me. I came to realize that since I can't [00:09:00] multitask, we keep being told, no one can multitask: one thing at a time, and whether that's family, whether that's work, whether it's something else, my own health. Your stories, the things you've said, emphasize that balance is hard for you too, I think. I think it just doesn't exist for anyone.

Eliza Chin: Right. 

Christine Ko: And the fact that sometimes you worked part-time, sometimes full-time, sometimes more than full-time, and then with AMWA. There's some serendipity that we don't necessarily know what's around the corner for us. You've really had, and you do have, this really amazing career. From the outside, it looks like you've really thrived, so it is inspiring. 

Eliza Chin: Oh, thank you so much. It's so nice of you to say that. One of my mentors, Dr. Leah Dickstein: one of the pieces that she wrote about is, It's okay. You can't have it all at the same time. She talked about coming into full force in her career when her kids were older. And I remember reading that, and I just couldn't see that far in the future. 'Cause when I did the [00:10:00] book, my kids were very young. As soon as my kids got older that they could manage themselves, that freed up so much of my time to be able to focus on the growing role in AMWA where I was able to do a lot more. Dr. Leah Dickstein: she was absolutely right. 

So we don't think about it when we're in different phases. We think, This is it, this is what it's gonna be. But there's so much opportunity for change, and in some ways I feel that we are blessed to be able to make those decisions. I know others who aren't able to, and I think the profession does allow some flexibility and opportunities. As women, I think that is something that we also have as well. 

Christine Ko: Yeah. Lovely. Do you have any final thoughts? 

Eliza Chin: I love that you're doing this. I love the fact that you're giving voice to so many women physicians, and I think our stories are all so different and unique, and I think that's a great thing about being a woman in medicine. There doesn't have to be a cookie cutter approach. We really can carve and forge that [00:11:00] path that we want. Whether we work full-time, whether we stay at home, whether we do a mix of both, whether we shift and change over the years. Really the opportunity to make those choices is wonderful. And I hope that anyone listening to this wants to get involved in what we're doing in AMWA. We have so many different pockets of work in different communities that there's a little something for everyone. Thank you for the time, and it's just been wonderful being on this.

Christine Ko: Thank you.