Like many physicians, Rana Awdish, MD, MS, pursued the kind of academic success she knew medicine valued.
As a pulmonary and critical care physician, conducting clinical research and publishing in her field were an expectation. But when a project Dr. Awdish began in fellowship took her eight years to publish, she began to suspect clinical research may not be the right fit for her.
When she began writing narrative medicine pieces, the difference was striking. She found writing about patient experience and compassionate communication to be fulfilling in a different way.
“It felt effortless partly because I was enjoying it so much,” said Dr. Awdish, a pulmonologist and critical care physician at Henry Ford Health. She looked forward to writing and found herself thinking about the work even when she was not doing it. And her writing resonated. Her first perspective piece, “A View from the Edge–Creating a Culture of Caring,” was published in the New England Journal of Medicine and went viral online.
The experience helped Dr. Awdish reconsider what a successful medical career could look like—and whether the traditional markers of achievement were the only ones worth pursuing.
She explores those themes in her second book, After Shock: Learning to Reinhabit My Body After Illness. While her first book, In Shock: My Journey from Death to Recovery and the Redemptive Power of Hope, examined her own life-threatening illness and what medicine needed to change, the new book turns inward.
“How much more of myself can I bring to medicine?” is the question Dr. Awdish said she began asking. And relatedly, “Why did I ever edit out those parts of myself?”
For women physicians in particular, she believes answering that question can be an important part of building careers that are both sustainable and meaningful. It requires what she describes as attunement: noticing what energizes you, where your strengths emerge and when your work feels most aligned with your sense of purpose.
But physicians cannot do that alone. Health systems also need to create flexibility that allows careers to evolve as physicians’ lives and interests change.
Henry Ford Health is part of the AMA Health System Member Program, which provides enterprise solutions to equip leadership, physicians and care teams with resources to help drive the future of medicine.
Notice what gives you energy
Medicine can train physicians to focus continually on the next accomplishment, Dr. Awdish said. There is another promotion to pursue, another paper to publish or another professional milestone to reach.
That forward momentum can make it difficult to notice the moments that are already meaningful.
Dr. Awdish recommends starting small. On the drive home, for example, a physician might think about one moment during the day when they felt they were using their unique gifts to their fullest potential.
“You can start to notice patterns,” she said.
The answer may not point toward a prestigious title or the career path a physician was taught to pursue. A physician may instead realize that educating patients about managing chronic disease is what brings the greatest sense of purpose. Another might find that teaching medical students or mentoring colleagues creates that feeling.
Once physicians recognize those patterns, Dr. Awdish said, they can begin looking for opportunities that allow more of those moments into their work.
“The first step is noticing,” she said.
Question the expected path
Dr. Awdish’s experience with research helped her recognize another barrier: Physicians can internalize medicine’s ideas about which work deserves the most value and judge themselves against it.
Her interests increasingly centered on narrative medicine, reflective writing and communication. Yet those pursuits did not necessarily resemble the academic path she originally believed she should follow. That contrast can be especially difficult in medicine, where demanding work can become synonymous with worthwhile work.
“We feel that if something’s easy, maybe it’s not as valuable,” Dr. Awdish said, noting that physicians and other people often think “it should be hard. It should be a struggle.”
Instead, an activity that feels natural may reveal something about a physician’s strengths.
For physicians whose interests fall outside traditional career tracks, Dr. Awdish recommends they consider whether they have adopted someone else’s definition of success.
This is important because when physicians recognize value in an emerging field or different way of contributing, they should not automatically dismiss it because medicine has not fully embraced it, she said.
“We have to believe in it enough to bend medicine towards it,” Dr. Awdish emphasized.
Make room for careers to change
Individual reflection only goes so far if physicians work within structures that leave little room for change. For women physicians, Dr. Awdish said, flexibility can be particularly important because women often take on substantial caregiving and household responsibilities while also managing demanding medical careers.
Rigid expectations around schedules, productivity and time away can make career growth more difficult, she said. But health systems have an opportunity to rethink those structures.
Flexible schedules, job sharing and opportunities to provide telehealth from home are among the approaches Dr. Awdish believes can help. Technology may also remove some of the work that follows physicians home.
“It’s when we constrain them to these rigid structures that really were never built for our current lives that you lose them,” she said.
At Henry Ford Health, for example, Dr. Awdish said physicians are using DAX Copilot to help generate clinical documentation. Physicians still oversee the notes, but she said the technology has cut some of the after-hours documentation often referred to as “pajama time.”
“If you let women have more agency in shaping their jobs, they’ll do better,” Dr. Awdish said.
That agency can also help organizations retain physicians rather than lose them when the structure of a job no longer fits their lives.
Build purpose into your work
Dr. Awdish has gradually shaped her own career around several interests. Along with caring for patients, she helps run Henry Ford Health’s Physician Leadership Institute, teaches communication workshops and continues writing.
Rather than pulling her in unrelated directions, she said those roles reinforce one another. Teaching communication allows her to take lessons from her own experiences and help prepare other physicians to communicate differently with patients. Leadership development gives her an opportunity to support colleagues’ professional growth.
Writing has changed her clinical work too.
“I see the stories that they’re carrying. I listen differently,” Dr. Awdish said of her patients.
Together, those activities have strengthened her sense of purpose.
“I’ve been very fortunate that I’ve been able to shape a career that truly matches my interests,” she said.
That does not necessarily happen early in a physician’s career. Dr. Awdish acknowledged that physicians may have fewer opportunities to shape their days while still in training or establishing themselves professionally.
But as opportunities emerge, physicians can begin moving toward work that feels more aligned with who they are and what they hope to contribute.
Stay connected to yourself
Career sustainability is not only about choosing the right professional opportunities. It can also require physicians to pay attention to themselves.
Medicine trained many physicians to ignore what was happening in their own bodies and continue working, Dr. Awdish said. Over time, that disconnect can make it harder to recognize what they need.
Attunement, in contrast, requires noticing the internal world. For Dr. Awdish, that can take many forms. She pointed to journaling, breathing exercises, yoga and gratitude practices as examples of ways people might create space to notice what they are experiencing.
That awareness became deeply personal for her. By becoming more attentive to her body, it contributed to recognizing her own cancer after years of ignoring physical signals. The lesson extends beyond any one practice. It is about remaining connected enough to yourself that medicine does not consume every other part of who you are.
In her second book, After Shock: Learning to Reinhabit My Body After Illness, that idea becomes part of a larger question about what physicians bring to medicine.
“How can I give myself permission to show up as my fullest self and offer my gifts to my patients?” she said.
Healing, Dr. Awdish said, involves science and technology, but it also involves relationships with patients, listening, presence and remaining grounded during difficult moments. Physicians need room to bring those parts of themselves to their work too.
“Make sure you’re not sacrificing so much in service of medicine that you lose yourself,” she said.
