Women and men reported slight differences in what they found most rewarding about their jobs. About a third of both (31% of women and 34% of men) cited being very good at their job as a reward, and more women (37%) than men (32%) believe that relationships with patients are a major source of satisfaction. Fewer women (8%) than men (11%) considered making good money a chief benefit. On the other hand, Gregory Walter an American physician living and working in New Zealand, answered this question from his own point of view: "I think the most rewarding moments in my life are the ones were I am rewarded on a personal level. There are so many times I have made a hug difference in someones life or saved their life and there is no joy. Case in point was yesterday I had a 78 yr old nursing home patient come in to the ED in septic shock. Notes from the nursing home showed he was confused, lethargic with a low blood pressure for almost 2 days. I guess he was old and sickly and everyone's response was "oh why don't you let him go". The point was that his chart said that he wasn't ready to go. So we saved him. Not much joy in that. Just doing my job. On the other hand I can get a 2 year old come in with a subluxed radial head. A condition we call a nursemaids elbow. It is caused by tugging the arm too hard. The elbow get out of joint and the child cries and won't use the arm. For me it takes about 3 seconds to put it back in. When I hear that someone has a "nursemaids elbow" I try to go out to triage and fix it. It saves them 10 minutes of registering, 3 hours of waiting and it saves me 20 minutes of charting. I fix it. The family treats me like I have magic powers and everyone's day is better. It is such a simple thing but to that person at that moment I have made a big difference. Last month I took a chest x-ray for a cough and found a small probably unrelated lung cancer. The patient was young maybe 42. The lump small. Undoubtedly I saved her life. However when I told her I found a probable lung cancer as you might imagine she didn't exactly hug me for joy. Another time I had a guy in the waiting room with indigestion. I asked the nurses to bring him in ahead of the others and got an immediate EKG. It showed he was having a heart attack. I immediately called the Cardiologist who I knew personally. I also happen to know he was in the Cardiac Cath unit at that moment so when I called him he said. Great, just send him down right this minute. So because I had credibility with this cardiologist my word alone was sufficient. We didn't wait for paperwork. We rolled the guy into the Cath lab at which point he had an immediate cardiac arrest. He survived. A large clot was removed from his coronary artery and he was "good as new". It was very dramatic. Maybe 12 minutes from the moment I saw him until he was in the cath lab. Had anything else been done or any other path been taken he very likely would have died. We all felt great. You know several months down the track we heard that the patient refused to pay his ER bill. He said "we didn't do nothing for him" we just rolled him down the hall. Oh well, that's human nature I suppose. On the other hand, at one time I worked in a city in rural Georgia. There were several small hospitals in the county around us. The orthopaedic surgeon on call was on call for all of the hospitals at the same time. If they got something that the small hospital Emergency Department couldn't handle they packed them in an ambulance and transferred them to my hospital. They usually admitted them overnight and saw them in the morning. So one day a lady in her late 70s came in by ambulance with a dislocated hip. It had been dislocated for some 4 hours. The ER doctor fumbled with it pulled twisted and only managed to hurt this poor lady more. So the orthopaedist wall called and she was packed into an ambulance for a 1 hour ride. No amount of morphine was going to make this bearable. When she arrived at my hospital she was to go upstairs for admission. In the morning she would go to the OR to have her hip put back in. Breaking protocol I redirected the patient into my ED. I called the orthopaedist and said I was happy to put the hip back in there and then. He told me that it had been out several times in the past and that every time they had to take this lady to the OR to put it back in. I told him, "trust me on this Bob, I can get it in". So then I had to deal with this very tearful lady who you could imagine that despite all of the pain medicine was still hurting a lot. No way did she want me to touch her as every time someone other that "Bob" had done it they had hurt her. It took a lot of convincing but ultimately I sedated her put her hip in. 15 minutes and she was awake her hip was in and we put her back in the same ambulance for the ride home. She was the happiest lady in the world. I gave her my number and said that next time her hip was out have the ambulance crew call me from your home and I will meet you in the ER and put your hip back in. I wondered if I would ever have to make good on that promise. Then one day about 6 month later I got a call. I was off. I was puttering in my garage and got a phone call. The ambulance crew were at her house and she refused to get in the ambulance until they called me and got permission to divert the ambulance direct to my ER. (which was highly irregular). So I told them sure. I would meet her in the ER. The ambulance ride was 60 minutes. My ride was 15 minute so I had 45 minutes to scrub up and look "doctorly". Well, I put her hip back in and we sent her home again happy. During the process I learned that she was a wealthy widow. She owned an alligator farm that sold to Gucci and other high end fashion houses. She asked me to run for mayor of her small town. She said that she would pay for my campaign and assured me that with her support I would win. I thanked her for her kind thoughts but said that being mayor wasn't "my thing" besides, "if I were mayor who would their be to fix your hip next time it dislocates?". I wish there were more moments like this." Source 1, Source 2
