In this interview, an internist discusses her journey toward professional fulfillment, contrasting the monotony of highly specialized practice with the variety offered by internal medicine. She recounts taking maternity leave for her third child and working at Mount Sinai’s World Trade Center Monitoring and Treatment Program, an occupational medicine setting that cared for 9/11 first responders. While she found the experience rewarding and compatible with motherhood, she notes it did not fully satisfy her desire for adventure and diverse clinical challenges. She explains that internal medicine allows her to encounter a wide range of patient presentations, develop long‑term relationships, and avoid being pigeonholed into a narrow niche, which she views as essential for her sense of fulfillment and love of human relations.
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When it's sort of like the same thing every day, it's sort of less fulfilling. I didn't really want to be pigeonholed into this niche where I would need to sort of see just heart patients every day. And this is kind of why I went into internal medicine, not only know patients and be surprised by what they came in, but also develop continuity of care.
Okay, so you're taking time off from having your third child and you're internal medicine, correct? That's your specialty? Yeah, I'm an internist. Exactly. What type of environment were you working in? Hospital, practice? Where were you?
So when I took time off to be with my third child, to give birth to him, I was at Mount Sinai Hospital. I was working in the World Trade Center Monitoring and Treatment Program. So it was a hospital environment, but it wasn't an internal medicine environment. It was an occupational medicine environment dealing with the folks that had been at 9/11 and had suffered the aftermath.
Okay. And did you feel fulfilled in that kind of work? Was that scratching your medical itch, if you will, or was it more—
I mean, I enjoyed it very much. I wouldn't say it filled an itch. I think that it really was a great position for someone who was a mother of 2 young children and having her third, it definitely was eye-opening and was amazing to meet all of those people that had worked, the first responders from 9/11. So I think that was incredible. I only say that it didn't fill an itch just because I'm all about like adventure and excitement. And when it's sort of like the same thing every day, then it's less, it's sort of less fulfilling. And this is kind of why I went into internal medicine is because you walk into every door as an internist and you just don't know what you're going to get. Right. And so rather than specializing in just one field, like my husband chose cardiology, I didn't really want to be pigeonholed into this niche where I would need to sort of see just heart patients every day. Instead, I can kind of just get to not only know patients and be surprised by what they came in, but also develop continuity of care, which I touched on earlier when you asked me, is I really love human relations. Relationships and relations and, and how that works.
