The Conversation
Your Professional Decline Is Coming (Much) Sooner Than You Think
In July, Arthur C. Brooks wrote about how to make the most of it.
Arthur C. Brooks’s insightful piece really hit home for me. I was a primary-care physician for 33 years before closing my office to concentrate on elder and end-of-life care five years ago, when I turned 65. I had started feeling my fluid intelligence ebb, even as I was treating an ever more demanding caseload in a setting of corporatized health care.
My solution was to turn my practice over to a capable younger physician and embrace long-term-care geriatrics, where I have time to indulge my patients and lead from my heart.
I work with an excellent hospice team and facility staff. Not a week goes by when I don’t hold the hand of a dying person or sign a death certificate. My goal is to bring my patients the comfort and peace that allow heartfelt communication and that is only possible with reconciliation. Like the Buddha Mr. Brooks encountered, I have contemplated death and no longer find it threatening.
John Jefferys Bandola, M.D.
The article by Arthur Brooks is magnificent. As an 85-year-old professional, I have already experienced the world of angst he is now entering. Take his advice, please. He is especially right about the desire to explore spirituality, which professionals tend to neglect in their early years.
W. R. Klemm
I seem to have intuited and followed most of
