When I Take Off My White Coat….

Abstract

Lay persons might think physicians spend all their time in hospitals or clinics or that physicians fly their private jets to exclusive resorts for long weekends. But physicians are regular people just like their patients, and, when not on the job, they do many of the same things for the same reasons: playing with pets and doing sports, music, and art. Physicians might not have a blue-ribbon dog, might not have played varsity basketball in college, might not have gone to Julliard before medical school, might not have had one-person exhibits at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, but what they do when they are not wearing their white coats can make them better physicians when they put the coats back on again.