Retiring: How sad, how lovely

Walking to a St Patrick's day parade last year, I jogged across the street to make the light. After a few trots my right knee was suddenly in severe pain and locked up. I limped to the sidewalk, and it took five minutes before the pain went down enough where I could slowly limp along to the parade route. Luckily, I was meeting my son there who drove me home.

The next morning the ortho doc said it looked like an acute lateral meniscus tear. The MRI confirmed it. It also showed a chronic medial meniscus tear, an ACL strain, and a loose body that caused the knee to lock up. Seventeen days later I was in the operating room for knee arthroscopy. The ortho doc vacuum cleaned the debris inside the knee along with shaving the rough spots.

My 20-mile bike rides ended, and months of physical therapy followed. I missed two weeks of work. One after the incident when it was too painful to stand and walk, and another after the surgery.

Time to Retire?

I was thinking about retiring for years. Primary care medicine was getting more burdensome with increasing paperwork—hassles with insurance prior authorizations, daily electronic messages from patients in increasing volume, and no time to answer them except after hours and days off. I enjoyed relationships with patients, getting to know them, and often being able to help them, but the burdens were starting to wear me out. The 2022 International Health Policy Survey of Primary Care Physicians found that older physicians (55+) were less likely to experience stress, emotional distress, or burnout than younger physicians. Yet at least half of older physicians were planning on retiring in the next three years. I would be among them. This would leave the primary care workforce increasingly younger, more stressed, and burnt-out. Would retiring be like abandoning a sinking ship?