A caregiving community at Carolina
Early career physician scientists, in particular, struggle with working long hours, finding time to write grants to fund their research, starting a family and maintaining a work-life balance.
Since 1979, the physician scientist with a medical degree has teetered on the edge of the “endangered species” list. This group of doctors not only sees patients, but conducts research and teaches or mentors students. Early career physician scientists, in particular, struggle with working long hours, finding time to write grants to fund their research, starting a family and maintaining a work-life balance. They are at risk for burnout and a handful will leave the profession before becoming tenured.
Sylvia Becker-Dreps is one of these physician scientists. She practices at the site of UNC Family Medicine’s underserved track in Prospect Hill, North Carolina — but her research is a little more remote. Every few months, she travels to Leon, Nicaragua, where she and her team focus on the prevention and epidemiology of childhood pneumonia and diarrhea and, in recent months, Zika infection.
On top of being a physician and researcher, she juggles the schedules of three children — and her youngest daughter, Eva, has a rare coordination disorder. “There are only four or five kids in the country that have what she has,” she said. So in-between her travels to Nicaragua, her clinical work at the Prospect Hill Community Health Center, and days spent in her office at UNC-Chapel Hill writing research grants, Becker-Dreps traverses all over the Triangle, taking Eva, now 8, to her physical and occupational therapy appointments and tutor.
“I’ve spent a lot of time in the waiting room during a therapy session trying to get a grant written,” Becker-Dreps said. “But it’s not the best way to do things. It’s better to have a block of time to really focus on writing a great grant.”
Carolina psychiatrist Eliza (Leeza) Park lives a similar life. When she’s not seeing patients, she’s researching how parents with advanced cancer make decisions about their treatment and identifying ways to improve their quality of life. After beginning to delve deeply into this topic in 2015, though, she gave birth to her son, Cody, 12 weeks early. He spent the next 10 weeks in the neonatal intensive care unit battling lung problems and other consequences of prematurity.
Park took leave for six months to focus on her son. Now 19 months old, Cody sees eight specialists and attends anywhere from one to four appointments each week. “I think to be a good scientist you really have to throw yourself into it, which most of us want to do,” Park says. “But at the same time, I’m devoted to being a good doctor to my patients and mother to my two small children. That’s the difficult part — the balancing act.”
Early career physician scientists like Becker-Dreps and Park are vulnerable to burnout from these high work demands, limited resources and caregiving needs at home. The Doris Duke Charitable Foundation recognizes this problem and, at the beginning of 2016, awarded a total of $5.4 million to 10 schools over the course of five years to provide stronger institutional support and supplemental funds to early career physician scientists.
Carolina received $540,000 to develop a program that, today, is led by UNC-Chapel Hill psychiatry professor Susan Girdler and Amelia Drake, director of the UNC Craniofacial Center.
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