18. Prioritizing God in a Demanding Medical Career

In this episode of Heal the Healers, host Inga Hofmann, MD, a pediatric hematologist and physician coach, tackles the challenge many Christian physicians face: balancing a demanding medical career with their faith. We'll discuss the 'patient first' mentality and how it can often become an obstacle to spending time in prayer and attending church. Through heartfelt insights and conversations we've had with fellow Christian physicians, we highlight the dangers of letting work overshadow our spiritual intimacy. We invite you to reevaluate your priorities with us, emphasizing that while compassionate patient care is essential, it should not replace our relationship with God. 

00:00 Introduction to Heal the Healers

01:32 The Challenge of Balancing Faith and Medicine

04:07 The Heart of a Physician

05:58 The Slippery Slope of Prioritizing Medicine Over Faith

10:36 Reconnecting with God

15:40 The Importance of Community and Quiet Time

19:43 A Call to Return to Intimacy with God

26:53 Prayer and Invitation

30:46 Heal the Healers Retreat Announcement

34:18 Closing Remarks and Call to Action

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Transcript

Restream recording Sep 05, 2024 • 07:34:42 PM: 0:00

Welcome to another episode of Heal the Healers. I'm so happy you're here and in today's episode, we will be talking about prioritizing God in a demanding medical career. And my question to you really is, how many times do you feel that your service to your patients, to the organization, you know, the, Patient first mentality has really been challenging and standing, perhaps even in the way for you to spend time with God and go to church or spent quiet time in prayer. Whatever it is, if this is you and you feel like there's this tug of war going on between medicine and my faith, then This episode is for you. So please stay tuned for after the music and we will be right back and unpack that. Welcome to the Heal the Healers podcast, where we explore the intersection of faith and medicine, discover your God given potential and experience Christ's healing in the midst of medical burnout. I'm your host Inge Hoffmann, a pediatric hematologist, physician coach, and follower of Jesus. Together, we will navigate the challenges of medicine. Integrate faith into our personal and professional lives, experience spiritual renewal, and find restoration in Christ. Welcome to the Heal the Healers, where Christ heals one physician and one patient at a time. Well, hello there and welcome back. It's so good to see you. And in this episode today, we will focus on prioritizing God in our demanding medical career. Being physician it's no secret that it can be very demanding and busy, and we have. Pretty crazy schedules, right? So we will talk about that. But before I go there, make sure you subscribe and share this show. So if you're listening on a podcast, go and subscribe to the show and also leave us a review that is super helpful for others to find the show. And then if you're watching on YouTube or any other platform do the same. Share and subscribe and that way the show follows you and you can easily find it versus you have to go and find it in if there is a new episode released. So that will then automatically come to you in your inbox. Well, not in your email necessarily, but into your podcasting platform. So that is all I want to say about that. So let's dive right in and thank you by the way, for doing that is a huge, makes a huge difference and it's really a blessing. For me. But let's go and talk about how to prioritize God in this demanding career. And this is a bit of a follow up conversation from our last episode, episode 17, where we talked about kind of a shift in perspective. What we would see going to church, not as another chore or an appointment on our calendar, but rather a time to worship God. And I'd want to take this a little bit further today, because this was a very rich conversation I had with a colleague a few months ago. And honestly, some a conversation that frequently comes up when I talk to Christian physicians, We have these demanding careers and it can be incredibly difficult to make it all work. Let's be honest. And I think sometimes what creeps in that no matter how wonderful our patient services, but that our service to our patients sometimes. It's wonderful and it's compassionate and it's loving. And that's why we're into medicine. But it sometimes feels like that is replacing our time with God. And we feel also there's perhaps no other way out because that is the demand placed on us. And I want to look at that a little bit from a different angle today. Based on my personal experience and that of other colleagues that I've talked to, and I believe it's going to bless you. So maybe I want to start with just sharing, that, you know, all of us went into medicine, because we are compassionate people. We love helping people. And that is our heart and soul in this. And that is a desire God probably placed in your heart. And that's beautiful. And perhaps you're a little bit like me, too. You geek out about the science, and you just wanted to know how all this works. And you even marvel at all the beautiful creation. God has placed in us and how wonderful our bodies, our minds, everything, physiology, anatomy, everything is put together, and you have been equipped with amazing medical knowledge and a compassionate heart to serve patients in need. And that's a beautiful thing. And none of my conversation today will take away from that. And that is really, really important because I know that we all at the core and at the heart of things went into this profession to make a bigger impact, to serve and help people, to heal the sick, discover new therapies, and maybe discover something in the lab, whatever your career track or specialty is. You wanted to take care of the sick and help them take care of families and make life better for people and cure diseases. Perhaps regardless of your motivations for some level or another, you went in there with a compassionate heart to make an impact. And these are all wonderful and beautiful things. And again, hear me as I'm saying the rest. That is the heart of the matter. And that's a beautiful thing. But as Christian physicians while we want to provide compassionate care, and we do, we also realize the medical system is quite broken, and that is a different conversation, but obviously all of us are struggling to provide that care The same way we envisioned it to be because the system is broken, healthcare is broken, it has become a corporate organization versus having the heart and the center of patients first. Even though we put that on our banners and say that everywhere in lip service and the medical environment, we all at the core feel as physicians And other professionals probably too, that that is a bit of a lip service and organizations don't really stand behind what they're saying there in insurance companies. But again, that is a different conversation, and I'm not here to fix the system, although I do with all my heart believe. God is raising up an army of people, physicians like you and me that are focused on him, that are focused on godly values, that are led by the Holy Spirit to bring change to the medical community. And that's why I'm so glad you're here. And this is really my mission with this, with this podcast, with this show, to help you individually to integrate Your faith into medicine and make it all one seamless thing versus attack of war between the two worlds. But also to create a change in a movement in medicine on a bigger scale. And God is gonna use each and every one of us to his will to his desires. Our jobs just to figure out where has he placed me and what does he want me to do? Another conversation. I love to get excited about these things, as you can tell. But so as physicians, we want to provide compassionate care. We want to make that impact. And over the years of having been in medicine, right, starting from medical school until now, we are having this patient comes first mentality and that is not a bad thing. We say this and many of us mean that and we have made a lot of sacrifices to serve patients first. I don't know about you, but as a peds oncologist, I can tell you many times, lunch and bathroom breaks and all those things had to wait when there was a critical situation when the family needed another sit down, talk to have a hard conversation or perhaps just had some questions or just rounds took forever and you wanted to just get through them and pushed off lunch afterwards because you just wanted to see all the patients first. All of that is with well intent, but has gotten to a big detriment for our own wellness, our own health, our own mental and physical health. And that is also not a secret. And we can see by the mass exodus out of medicine, by the high suicide rates that physicians are At the brink of a total breakdown and that has many, many reasons and many factors to consider. But part of that is this ingrained mentality we have in us that came from a good place. We're going to serve the patient first. We do everything else. And put the patient above else, and as a compassionate person, and perhaps as a believer, maybe that is even an extra thing because you're feeling like you're not just trained to think that way, but you're also feeling when I serve the patient. When I take care of people that are sick, when I'm in the hospital grinding and working long hours, especially if it's on real patient care and not all the nonsense we have to do, that you're doing a service up unto the Lord. And we should work, all of us, everything we do should be that way, but at least that's what the Bible tells us. But the problem is that that sometimes gets derailed to our own detriment. See, we all trained all these hard years, acquired this amazing medical knowledge. Yet, over the years, what often happens, we come to realize that we get into this slippery slope. first, or I got to do this first and perhaps idolizing medicine and putting all that in our busy schedule before God. If we're really honest, and now I know what you might say well, I don't have a choice or, I'm supposed to do my job. Well, yes, you supposed to do your job. Well and perhaps you feel like, okay, there will be another season. But in the end we have to remember that everything. That puts something else above God, no matter how altruistic or beautiful or wonderful it is. It is an idol and the Bible calls that out and God's very serious about that. And I was convicted many times about that where like, Oh, I have an idol over here. And we don't like to look at medicine as an idol. We can easily say money is an idol and me wanting, wanting stuff can be an idol. And me even hanging out on social media becomes my idol. And all these things are true. Bye. Do believe that we sometimes have a hard time seeing that medicine can become our idol. I did do a prior episode on that, and I had a little bit of a different twist looking at some of the medical knowledge and how we prioritize that and feel like that's more important than what God has to say. Listen back to that episode that I did earlier, but what I wanted to really point out here, it is because of our compassionate hearts that we have a hard time seeing that if we going down this road, we are entering a very slippery slope to suddenly switch our focus from God to God. To medicine and the service to patients, and it's very easy to do that. I have totally done that. And the conversation I had with my friend, I totally do that. So we often tend to make excuses. You know, I have to see another patient. I am on call. I'm doing a good work here. I will, you know, get to church another time in our medical practice, regardless where you are in your practice. where you practice, what you practice can take over our entire lives very easily. And for good reasons, we love our patients. We want to make a difference. We have very, very highly demanding schedules that most people don't understand. And we're just physically and mentally exhausted, right? It is a very intense job. Not to mention the emotional exhaustion that we sometimes underestimate by just carrying all the stuff that our patients unload on us. All the problems we see, sometimes really serious things beyond the cold and the next UTI and the next boring rash you see might be some real difficult problems in families. And That can really tear us down. So we can be very fragile in that way and very vulnerable. And I think that this all those moments that can add up to slowly slipping away from the Lord if we are not careful. And it usually isn't one day we decide, Oh, I, Don't want to go to church. It's not important. It's these little tiny decisions that we make day to day and even throughout the day that slowly make us slip away and more and more forget, and it becomes then very easy because again, schedules are busy. We are physically and mentally exhausted. Who doesn't want to sleep in on a Sunday and maybe say, You know what? I had a horrible week on call. I'm gonna go sleep in. God understands. And I'm gonna go to church next week. And I'm not saying that to be religious about it. I do feel like there's times where the Lord might tell you to rest, and it's not about showing up to church out of religious rituals. That's religion. We don't want that you, but we wanna focus on the relationship with the Lord. And some of it has to do though. With good spiritual discipline and showing up and doing it, even we don't feel like it. So there is a tight balance here. And I think very easily because off the slippery slope that we all can easily enter. I have definitely done it. We start to make easy excuses. And serving patients and medicine as our profession, being a physician and having a servant's heart can come easily. Our default excuse and operation, how we, we operate our days and our minds. So we might. Slowly stop going to church because we're like, oh, this was a busy week. I will go in next week And before you know it at best you show up in church once a month and that's actually ever I think that's a statistic I heard recently That most christians they go to church at most once a month Now I understand if you're on call on sunday and rounding and seeing patients you will not go and that's okay but I think Oftentimes, at least in my life, I'm like, I just need to sleep and I'm tired. And why should I show up there just for show kind of thing? And before we know it, we say, well, I'm just gonna watch the service online. And that became so acceptable during COVID. And It is a good tool that we have. It was a helpful tool for a season, although maybe not the right thing to do. That's a different conversation, but we cannot replace real church and real community and real interaction and real sitting in the presence of the Lord and worshiping and praising and doing that, not in isolation at home in front of your computer, in in multitasking, but other ways, but actually sitting in the presence of people. And so, but easily that has become sort of an excuse. And it's great if we use that as a tool and say, I'm traveling to a medical conference. I will be not in town at my home church, but they have a streaming service so that I still can connect what pastor was saying that week. That's awesome. That's awesome. But it shouldn't be our default because we are too busy or we are too tired. Go get back into community. It is an entirely different experience. And I remember whenever I was down that slippery slope, including COVID when churches were closed for the most part, that I was craving church eventually. I was like, I need to go back there. I, I want to go back there. And I think that is something that God has placed in us. So slippery slope with church. We we might have a slippery slope with quiet time. Oh, I just, hit the snooze button. I love my snooze button. It's a real problem. Too many times this morning. And now I ran out for proper quiet time and all I have time for is a verse a day. Now a verse a day is a starting point, but really that does not sustain you. I talked about that in the past. A verse a day is spiritual starvation. If that's where you're at. Praise the Lord start there, but make sure you have some sort of plan in place to build that up to build your stamina in reading this word. This is your lifeline, and we cannot ignore that. So make sure you don't skip intimacy with God. And when I talk about quiet time. It is not just studying a word or praying or dump your prayer requests to the Lord, but actually sit in his presence. And that takes real, it takes time. It does take some practice, and it took me a long time to really say, Oh, No, I got to sit here and I don't always do it that well. Sometimes I sit and study and read and pray. And other times I just know I need to sit a little longer and then something happens and the Lord will speak to me or I start journaling to process and the Lord will speak to me and a prayer will flow out or something will come or a revelation will come or a new awareness or a word of knowledge about somebody that I'm praying for that. Happens when we increase intimacy with the Lord. And that is something we cannot cut corners on. And I don't want to sound harsh. I'm saying this with our love and compassion, because I've been there, there's still days I struggle with that. And my mind wanders, or I'm just feeling distracted, but I want to make the point that it becomes a slippery slope very quickly. And I believe that God really Wants to spend time with us. He cares about you, but It's hard for him to help and guide you if we don't spend time in his presence. And that's really important. And how do I know all this? It is because I've been there. I have experienced seasons where I withdrew. And I felt I had good reasons because I was busy. My kids were little having babies. Oh my goodness. That was a rough season. Because I'm a busy physician, I have an intense schedule and my physician life takes everything that I got out of me. And I know that that's all true and valid on the surface, but yet I also realized, and this was a powerful conversation with that friend. And she said that too. She said, you know what? Yes, this sounds all okay, but I'm making excuses. I'm making excuses to not get into the presence of God. And that is the most important thing. If anything is our lifeline in this world, For us, it is the Word of God and His presence and the power of the Holy Spirit and Jesus, our redemption. And if we forsake any of those we're going to be in trouble. I've been in trouble because of it, because of my disobedience, because of me making medicine my idol. And I was counting, Taking care of patients, my service to God, when all he wanted is me sitting at his feet and in his presence, I thought being there taking care of my patients, that is a service to God. God sees that, and that is good enough, but I'm here to tell you that your service to your patients. No matter how honorable, compassionate, loving, kind and, and whatever adjective you want to use, it is does not at all under any circumstances replace your relationship and intimacy with God. And he wants to call us back to that intimacy. It's always about a relationship with him first, and then everything else falls into place. And I know that it's sometimes hard for us to swallow and not easy for us to see. Honestly, oftentimes I feel like I didn't realize really how important what was until I took a leap of faith, went back to spending time with God and then saw the drastic difference. And I just want more of that in my life. I want more of that in your life because I know you will be richly blessed and also I think it will make a big difference into your mental health and your well being physically, mentally, emotionally, in your family in all aspects, including better patient care. I truly believe that. So let's go to the Lord first. And I want to encourage you, and perhaps this sounds even like a warning, a very loving warning. Do not let your job or service To your patients or the organization get in the way of your time with God and intimacy with him. And I really, that's really my heart and my prayer service and self sacrifice to the medical system doesn't replace our intimacy with God. And honestly, it has to be. Horrendous consequences on us and our wellbeing, on our families, on our marriages, when we do it the other way around. And I see that sadly every day and people that I pray for in the medical profession in various communities things fall apart. And it's, it's not because people are doing that intentional because I think when we lose connection with the Lord, things can fall apart. And I'm not saying that it's your fault. I'm not saying that that if you're perfect, everything will be perfect. No, we will never be perfect. I'm not perfect, but I do feel like there is a big correlation how things go in my life. That of my family when I'm closer to the Lord. So again this all starts usually small. It was a slow slipper slope, how to get there maybe. And it's all small baby steps perhaps to get out of that. As we drift away from our faith, we can come back when we were in the desert. land and problems arise. And we're not even sure how we got there. It usually is by small little action steps, not by intention. It's not because we chose to, but by a small, small shift, a tiny shift in what we are doing. And I believe you can get back to the Lord in the same way by small steps. He is there. He is ready. He is reaching out his hand. He's saying Inga. Whoever you are on the other side, I want to spend more time with you. Come get away with me. Come sit at my feet and learn from me. Remember the Lord says, come to me, all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take up my yoke and learn from me because I'm gentle and humble at heart, and you will find rest with me. for your souls. The key part is we have to come. And the key part is he is gentle, he's humble, and it's not going to be heavy. It's going to be light. He's going to teach us the, the easy way to so to speak. That doesn't mean life will be always easy. There will be plenty of challenges, especially, particularly as a Christian in many ways in health care these days. Yet he makes the path easy. And he's teaching us. So I encourage you so much. And I really, really pray if this resonated with you. Stop what you're doing right now. If you're like any part of this feels true. Stop what you're doing right now. Now, not if you're on the road, then maybe do it later. But ask the Lord for forgiveness. Repent Where you might have made medicine your idol and return to him and let God just search your heart and point it out to you. He's eagerly waiting. He loves you. He is ready for you. And he is ready for you and me to make that step towards him. So as we enter back into his presence, he will equip us and actually. I believe as we do that, our impact and medicine, the part that got us to medicine in the first place will be much bigger and much larger because of that, because we have now God by our side and we learn to listen to his voice and direction in every way. So if you are in a position, even if you're driving, you don't have to close your eyes, but speak after me. Let us just pray together. So Lord Jesus, I thank you for every person right here. And Lord, I thank you that you draw us into your presence and Lord where we got busy and made medicine our idol. I pray Lord that you, that you point that out to us where we have slipped off and we don't have to analyze it. Thank you for letting us just come back to your presence, Lord. Please forgive us where we have been just too busy and too distracted. Forgive us where we have patient care and medicine. Put it above you and even our medical knowledge. Lord, forgive us where we are. Put busy schedules as an excuse for not even spending a minute with you and Lord, thank you. Thank you so much for being a kind and loving father for not holding us in condemnation, but rather saying no. I've already forgotten about it. I forgive you and come back to my presence. And I'm here to guide you, to support you. I'm here to speak to you and instruct you and teach you and all things through the power of the Holy spirit. And with that, I pray blessing of every person that is listening, that you will be blessed at your days and nights will be blessed when you take care of patients, that you will get revelation from the Lord himself about how to take care of those people, that you will be. equipped beyond your medical understanding and that people will say, wow, there was something going on here. How come this doctor is figuring this out? We haven't found a solution for this patient in so long. And yet somebody else shows up on the scene, not with more knowledge, not with more, more, more wisdom or intellect. But with the wisdom of God and with the power of the Holy Spirit, so I pray that every patient you touch that they will be touched by the power of God and that you will be begin to able to pray and intercede for them so that they will be healed and restored in Jesus name. Thank you so much, Lord. And if you're a person that listens to this by any chance, and you're like, I don't know the Lord Jesus, I, I'm, I'm curious what you're talking about. Or perhaps. You have been a person of faith, but you feel like, you know what, I've kind of gotten grown cold. I kind of become a little bit too relaxed. Church has become just a ritual, but I don't really have an intimate relationship with God. I'm following a religion, but I don't have a relationship. Well, then I encourage this and just pray this after me. So just say, dear Lord Jesus. Come into my heart, forgive me of my sin, wash me and cleanse me, set me free. Jesus, thank you that you died for me. I believe that you are risen from the dead and that you are coming back again for me. Fill me with the Holy Spirit. Give me a passion for the lost, a hunger for the things of the past. God, give me a holy boldness to spread the gospel and just provide loving care for all my patients and see them through the eyes of Jesus. I'm saved. I'm born again. I'm forgiven. I'm on my way to heaven. And because of that, because I have Jesus in my heart. Thank you, Lord. Amen. And if you prayed that prayer and you want some more prayer support, just reach out to me. You can actually, I should have put this up here. You can go to my website and it's inga hoffman. com. And I actually have a form there, a prayer expressed form that you can fill out and reach out to me to get prayer. I really want to pray for you. I want to support you. And lastly, before we go, thank you for listening and sticking it out with me here. I want to. let you know about the Heal the Healers Retreat. So as you might have heard already many times, I'm hosting retreat for the first time for Christian physicians. It's nothing like that is out there. It's not a Christian conference with a bunch of CME talks where you learn about medical topics and various things in medicine and how to maybe approach them from a faith based perspective. That is all good. And well, lots of great organizations like the CMD already do that. Now, this is a retreat for you to unplug and really come into the presence of God for physicians and believers to connect. We're gonna have keynote speakers. And learn about the healing ministry of Jesus, which will richly bless and help you to be healed and restored from all the baggage we carry as physicians, as well as being equipped to take better care of your patients. So there will be worship, there will be prayer time, and there will be times to just have ministry time and, of course, connect with others. That's the best part. So please join us at the retreat. It's. November 1st and 2nd in Madison, Wisconsin at a beautiful, beautiful venue right on campus at the University of Wisconsin. Called upper house. It is a breathtaking, beautiful space. You will be just blessed being in the space. So come see us there on November 1st and 2nd, Madison Wisconsin. We're just a little over a couple months out at the time of this recording. If you are a dual physician household or your spouse wants to come and is not a physician is more than welcome. This will be a blessing for anybody, but of course, we're going to specifically minister to physicians, but it will be a huge blessing and you will be minister to even though you're not a physician, but because Let's be honest being a physician. My husband is not a doctor. It's it's a family job because the other spouse sees a lot what we are seeing experiencing our pain and that can alone take a strain on family. Do a physician. Household takes it to another level. So regardless of where you are, if you want to come as a couple, as a husband and wife team, please visit scan the QR code, register, and then in the checkout, put couples 20. The code is below in the checkout page. And that gives you a 20 percent discount for each ticket. All your meals will be included. We're going to have wonderful food, not a bunch of garbage. And you will be really blessed. If you are a trainee also scan this barcode and then you can email me. I put the email here as well as on the website. It's inga at ingahoffman. com 1F2N to get a 60 percent trainee discounted ticket. ticket. That will really bless you. And we want to make that affordable for you. So you can come and join us as well. We would love to see your residents, fellows, even medical students. If you want to come are very, very welcome because you are the next generation that we need to raise up an army in medicine. That is the next generation. Being the hands and feet of Jesus with that. I thank you. You have a wonderful day. God bless you and talk to you soon and we'll see you next week. Prayer is that you were encouraged, strengthened and perhaps even convicted with this episode today. If this podcast has blessed you, would you help share it with your friends and colleagues and even share it on social media? Also, leave us a review on the podcast platform where you are listening to this content. It would help us a lot. Together, we can share the good news of Jesus and transform medicine one physician and one patient at the time. Have a great day.