Yumiko Kadota is a medical doctor from Sydney. She resigned from public hospital work after experiencing burnout and now works in medical education and private health. Her story entered mainstream media after she blogged in February 2019 about her experiences as a trainee in the health system, opening with the words: ‘I never thought I would say this, but I broke. I give up. I am done. I am handing back my dream of becoming a surgeon.’ Nowadays she’s rebuilding herself, starting with her health. She blogs on wide range of topics that reflect her various interests; eco-warrior, yogi, books.
Today, Yumiko Kadota is on the blog to answer some of our questions about her memoir, Emotional Female. Read on!
Tell us about your book, Emotional Female!
YK: Emotional Female is about my life as a medical student and junior doctor, aspiring to become a plastic surgeon. I had studied for six years, and then trained for a further six before finding myself trapped in a toxic work environment. ‘Emotional female’ is something I got called during that time. At that stage, I was working excessive hours with little support, and I was at my physical and mental limit. Emotional Female explores the difficulties of being a part of the medical profession, particularly in an old-fashioned, male-dominated surgical specialty – there was misogyny, casual racism, bullying and harassment. Medicine is hard enough without having to deal with all of that! Ultimately, I decided I’d had enough, and left.
Why did you decide to write this memoir?
YK: I never thought in my wildest dreams that I’d even be attempting to write a book! When I blogged about the hospital experience, it was something I didn’t know so many others would relate to. The blog post was shared on social media and was on the news in 2019. From that, I ended up getting approached by a couple of publishers (via Facebook no less!) … and here we are. It’s still very surreal. Once I started writing it, I realised that it was important to make sure it doesn’t happen to other vulnerable young doctors. It’s not okay to exploit eager young doctors who are competing for limited training positions. I don’t know what impact one book can have, but I really hope we can eliminate the problematic behaviours that we currently observe in the medical system, which are eroding away the wellbeing of junior doctors.
Can you talk us through the moment when you realised you needed to quit your job? How did you feel then?
YK: I knew that my physical health was suffering, as well as my mental health. I was trying so hard to make some changes, including asking for a fairer distribution of the workload (I was working ten 24-hour on-call shifts every fortnight while my counterpart worked just four). Despite several attempts at talking to my supervisors, nothing was being done, and eventually I was given an updated roster that showed I would be working even more hours towards the end of that term. That’s when I knew it wasn’t going to get better. In fact, I knew it would be far worse if I chose to stay. When I quit, one of my former colleagues said, ‘I’m so glad you’re alive’. And she wasn’t being dramatic. I think she really meant it. (That person was Jan, who you’ll meet in the book!)
How difficult was it to reconcile your burned-out self with the image you had of yourself as a dream daughter, model student and ‘workaholic’ surgeon?
YK: It was absolutely soul-crushing. The first person I thought about was my father. I didn’t want him to be disappointed in me. I honestly think that he probably still wishes I had become a surgeon (sorry Dad). But you know what? I’m not living my life for anyone else other than me. Even though my identity was so closely tied to my work, I have now let go of that. I’m okay with not being what I thought I was going to be. I’m a lot happier now, living a life that aligns with my values, and that’s more important.
Can you tell us a little bit about how you found the resilience to rebuild your life after walking away from your surgery career?
YK: It wasn’t easy, I won’t lie. There are even times now when I feel very sorry for myself or angry about what happened, but those moments are few and far between. I had my little Eat, Pray, Love adventure and became a yoga teacher in Bali. There, I read a lot of yoga philosophy which helped me immensely. I cringe a little inside when I think about self-help books, but honestly The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle really resonated with me. A fellow yoga teacher I met in Bali had recommended it so I decided to give it a go, and I’m glad I did. I’ve always had the ‘let’s get on with it’ attitude, but reading affirming texts did help me a lot. That, and a lot of therapy!
How common is this ‘knife before life’ attitude amongst surgeons in Australia? How much harm do you think it’s doing?
YK: The original phrase I’d heard when I was a medical student was ‘knife before wife’. I feel sorry for the partners of surgeons. They are called surgical widows, because they never see their partners – isn’t that awful? There’s a lot of ego, bravado, and toxic masculinity in certain sub-cultures of surgery, and it’s extremely harmful even for the heterosexual, cis-gender men in it. There are a lot of naturally competitive, type-A personalities in surgery, and this ‘knife before life’ attitude certain perpetuates the idea that to be successful you have to put everything else second to surgery.
What’s the main change you would like to see implemented in the Australian public hospital system with regards to training?
YK: Gosh, there are a myriad of things that need changing in the health care system, but I think a lot of problems would be mitigated if we had more training positions. With more training surgeons, there would be less competition, and hopefully a more collegiate attitude between trainees rather than the cut-throat, dog-eat-dog environment that I sometimes observed. With less pressure to get a training spot, the junior doctors would be less vulnerable to exploitation by their seniors. At the moment, because the training spots are highly coveted, some senior surgeons feel as though they can treat their juniors however they like because they’re being relied upon for good references. It’s a bit of a cruel bartering system. With more training surgeons, the workload can also be distributed better – burnout is a serious problem contributing to poor mental health in the profession. I could rattle on forever, but I think increasing training positions would be a start.
Do you have any words of advice for people experiencing the kind of burnout that you did?
YK: Take your time. Listen to your body, and don’t go back to work if you’re not feeling ready. Rushing back to work can impede on recovery, and potentially make you relapse. It’s so important to take all the time you need to recover. It takes a long time, but nothing is more important than your physical and mental health. It’ll be frustrating at times – recovery is not linear – but hang in there. You will get better, and it’s okay to ask for help. Be kind to yourself.
What do you hope readers will discover in Emotional Female?
YK: Courage. I think a lot of people are trapped in difficult situations, whether they are work-related or not. I hope reading the book might give someone the courage to stand up for themselves. Other than that, there are a lot of random nuggets of information that I hope people might find a bit interesting or amusing.
And finally, what’s up next for you?
YK: I want to read more books. Writing this book meant less time to leisure read. My TBR keeps getting longer and longer … and will probably take me a few years to get through! If Emotional Female is well received, then perhaps I’ll write again.
Thanks Yumiko!
YK: Thank YOU!
—Emotional Female by Yumiko Kadota (Penguin Books Australia) is out on the 2nd of March. Signed copies available only while stocks last!
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Emotional Female
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Yumiko Kadota was every Asian parent's dream: model student, top of her class in medical school and on track to becoming a surgeon. A self-confessed workaholic, she regularly put ‘knife before life’, knowing it was all going to be worth it because it would lead to her longed-for career.
But if the punishing hours in surgery weren’t hard enough, she also faced challenges as a young female surgeon navigating a male-dominated specialty. She was regularly left to carry out complex procedures without senior surgeons’ oversight; she was called all sorts of things, from ‘emotional’ to...
Comments
June 2, 2021 at 5:54 pm
Loved seeing Dr Yumiko Kadota on Insight on the ABC channel. I can relate to her because I worked in the health area too and was severely bullied too but not sexually assaulted. I now have unpredictable IBS also, which can be very embarrassing, but I try to see the funny side afterwards. I am grateful to her for her honesty re. this awful condition – IBS. I’ve personally seen a specialist physio to try and sort out the matter, but I may have to do a FODMAP diet too. Apart from the above she gave pearls of wisdom and was articulate, and I am glad to see she is glowing with happiness now. I will definitely be reading her book, because I admire her integrity and want to learn about how she recovered. Sending her a mental hug!