Session 332 - When Geriatric Psychiatrists Retire: A Conversation About Critical Transitions in a Professional Career

Abstract

Abstract: Geriatric psychiatrists daily encounter patients experiencing both the joy and difficulties of retirement. Yet they often do not consider their own “retirement”. How does a psychiatrist retire successfully? Though the trajectories and components of a successful retirement vary, we believe common themes do emerge. In this session two psychiatrists, past presidents of AAGP, who are “retired” on paper yet over a decade apart in age, enter a conversation regarding the transitions which they currently negotiate and lessons learned from these transitions. In our experience, retirement at best is a phased process from supervisor to mentor, from director to advisor, from tight schedules to more freedom to pursue new interests, from a packed agendas to time spent exploring new pursuits, from limited time for companionship to a greater engagement with family and friends. Yet we also have found that retirement brings challenges such as dealing with the vicissitudes of aging, declining physical abilities, cognitive aging and coping with anxiety and uncertainty. As psychiatrists age into the stage of life when retirement looks more attractive, appropriate and feasible, we encourage them to embrace the complete life cycle of the professional. Roles change. Some skills become outdated whereas others are of more value to society and the profession than ever. Most successful retirements, we believe, are not retirements which withdraw from the professional arena but rather engage in new ways with the profession, not to mention the psychiatric well-being of our society. This engagement, however, must not be in the service of the “good old days” but rather recognizes that a new generation of psychiatrists will live into a new world of health care. Successful retirement for us involves continued activity as long as health permits and an embrace of the professional life cycle, the integration of decades of work into an acceptance of one's one and only professional life.