Determining when it is your time to retire
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There comes a time in one’s career when colleagues constantly ask, “When are you going to stop working?”
After a while, it gets tiresome. Although, if people keep asking you, maybe that’s a sign you should step down!
Seeking advice about retirement
There is plenty of information available about retirement. For example, if you Google “advice about retirement,” you’ll get 394 million results. Too much for you? Google “advice about retirement in medicine,” and the results drop to 37.7 million. Good luck with either.
I had a mentor for 25 years whose surgical oncology division didn’t skip a beat when he retired. Although he wasn’t physically present the day after he retired, it was like he never left —a credit to his leadership and succession planning.
When I asked him how I will know when it’s time to retire, he replied, “you will know.” Really, that’s it? “You will know?” He then said, “The other way you will know is if you walk into your office one morning and somebody else is sitting behind your desk. That’s a good indication.” So far, I haven’t experienced the latter in my career.
Then there is my significant other of 42 years who, during a brief discussion of retirement, said something to the tune of “over my dead body.”
My colleagues know me as a quadruple A personality, Italian New Yorker and surgeon, with whom you don’t have to read between the lines during a conversation. So, you can understand why she wouldn’t want me at home 7 days a week.
‘Nothing supplants experience’
My generation of baby boomers has eschewed retirement at age 65 years. It seems if you are mentally alert and physically capable, you can continue to make major contributions to your occupation.
But what about giving the next generation a chance to move up the occupational/academic ladder, especially in medicine? Usually, succeeding generations are smarter (although, in my opinion, the jury is still out on millennials).
Many academic institutions realize that they can’t replace experience, and so, upon “retirement,” an individual becomes professor emeritus and can play a major role in the education of young trainees, serve on an institutional review board or scientific review committee, or help with philanthropic efforts. These are just a few examples of many.
Often in my career, I have experienced a heated discussion between individuals at a surgical morbidity and mortality conference abruptly end when a professor emeritus makes a comment based upon his/her experience, and nothing further needs to be said. Again, nothing supplants experience, especially in medicine.
That medical experience can be very valuable to young physicians and is one of the qualities of mentorship. A mentor guides individuals to become not only the best physician they can be, but also the best citizen.
As a mentor, I have always emphasized that it is not how hard you work, but rather what you have accomplished. The key to this is time management, which mentors devote a considerable amount of effort for trainees to learn.
Retiring at the top of your game
I told myself many times throughout my young surgical career that I would retire at the top of my career, which I thought would be around age 65 years.
I remember when Bob Cousy, the definitive point guard for the Boston Celtics who was known as the “Houdini of the Hardwood,” retired at what some would consider the top of his game. In response, people said that they wished he would stay on for a few more years.
The same is true of Al McGuire, the coach of the Marquette University basketball team, after he won his first and only NCAA national basketball championship in 1977. Instead of returning the next year, he retired, saying there was nothing further to accomplish. An NCAA basketball championship was the ultimate goal.
There is a satisfaction in retiring at the “top of your game” rather than hearing hallway chatter like, “Haven’t they been here long enough,” or, “Shouldn’t they have retired years ago?” I haven’t experienced that yet, but I also haven’t been walking the hallways much these days with COVID-19 still around.
Nevertheless, for me the thrill and challenge of building cancer programs, working with talented and motivated individuals, and continuing to teach young trainees made age 65 fly by. That 25-year mentor I mentioned above once told me that as you get older, time goes quicker. I didn’t understand that until I looked back at this year.
So, what does it all come down to?
Along with HemOnc Today’s Chief Medical Editor for Oncology, Derek Raghavan, MD, PhD, the thrill of building unique hybrid academic-community cancer centers with the hopeful goal of being recognized by the NCI as a designated cancer center keeps us going at a strong pace.
Maybe the next time the two of us talk, we will decide how much longer we will remain in practice.
Until then, both of us will just keep on truckin’!
For more information:
Nicholas J. Petrelli, MD, FACS, can be reached at npetrelli@christianacare.org.
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