Work–Life Balance: How Can We Achieve It within the Work Environment?

During more than 30 years since I enrolled into Medical School, I have had discussions around work–life balance with many friends, colleagues, and trainees. It appears to me that as I am getting older, I have these discussions more frequently, and also that more and more of my colleagues and trainees complain about a lack of work–life balance and are unhappy with the demands of the job on their daily lives. I am not sure if this subjective observation reflects changes in my work environment or if we as a society are changing attitudes toward work and life priorities, but we cannot find ways to alter our work demands to reflect these changes. As is customary in " philosophical " texts, I was looking for quotes from famous people, which would support my personal approach to work–life balance. Since I am Greek, I was looking for quotes from ancient Greek philosophers, quotes we encounter often in our readings although very few of us, I suspect, have ever read the original documents. I could not find any quote that I could be certain that was reflecting the opinions expressed in the original document and then remembered a quote from a contemporary book I read, " This is antiquity's value; it could be used to sanction anything. … bring in a few words from the writings (those denoised sound bites) of a Greek whose bones are well-mineralized and you have put wheels on your stupidity " (1). To avoid sounding stupid, or misrepresenting the writings of ancient Greek philosophers, I will continue without any such sound bites, but I will discuss here my experiences from my formative years in Greece that I believe have played a large role in my decision not only to follow a career in academic medicine but also to develop my personal approach to work–life balance. As a medical student at the Aristotelian University of Thessaloniki, Greece, I had the good fortune to do research with members of a small non-university-based, but with a very academic philosophy, research group within a specialty hospital in Greece. My interactions with the members of that group and my integration into the group had a significant influence in my personal and scientific growth. Many, if not most, of my mentors from that time are not active scientifically anymore, but I would be very happy if they saw this narrative and felt proud …