Community is found in our collective stories. The TFSL Community Blog is a space to share our unique experiences and perspectives as the spouses and partners of physicians.
Match Day. A single day that impacts the futures of the 4,800 Canadian Medical students and the 1,800 IMGs that apply to Canadian residency programs every year. Plus, the tens of thousands of their family members. As the spouse of a doctor, my Match Day is a day I’ll never forget.
Read MoreThe COVID-19 pandemic continues to affect the mental and physical health and well-being of Canadians. Physicians and their families continue to be highly affected in unique ways.
Read MoreThe COVID-19 pandemic has had an immense impact on the well-being of Canada’s physicians, who have made significant and ongoing sacrifices to keep our communities healthy, safe and informed. Physician families have made similar sacrifices, and they are feeling parallel impacts.
Read MorePhysician families face unique challenges including frequent moves, abnormal work hours and fluctuating finances. Surveys conducted for the general population in the USA and Canada report that between 72%1 and 80% of North Americans feel stress about at least one aspect of their finances.
Read MoreHealthcare systems depend on healthy physicians. To thrive, healthy doctors need healthy relationships; and healthy relationships start at home.
Read MoreWe all know that medical marriages are complicated ones. As well, I can attest that military ones are highly complicated as well. In fact, from what I hear from my civilian counterparts, their lives are at times very similar to mine.
Read MoreI remember it well. Over 8 years ago now at the beginning of our medical school journey I frequently got the advice, “Live your own life. Don’t wait around for him.”
Read MoreIt was a warm day in Toronto, Saleh came to visit me over one of his golden weekends from New York City where he had recently matched as an Obstetrics and Gynecology resident.
Read MoreAn excerpt from “Rhythms of Relationship: A Guide for Creating Purpose Patterns to Strengthen Your Marriage”
Read MoreNearly four hundred years ago, the English physician William Harvey published De motu cordis, which proposed a revolutionary idea: that a small amount of blood recirculates and sustains the whole human body.
Read MoreI’ll never forget March 13, 2020. It was Elliot’s first shift assessing patients with presumed COVID. He was asked if he was interested in swabbing patients in the ER while on a Sports Medicine rotation.
Read MoreIt was a frosty Friday evening and I was getting ready to meet my boyfriend’s colleague and his wife. Eric worked with Cornie in a small 6-physician family practice clinic in a rural community called Winkler - population 6500.
Read MoreWhen you think of values that make up a strong relationship, words like trust, love, empathy come to mind. But how about independence?
Read MoreAre you really feeling the stress these days? Yeah friend...me too. As if living in the midst of a pandemic wasn’t enough, you throw in an election of epic proportions, financial considerations, jobs, kids of any kind (fur babies or otherwise) plus a MEDICAL marriage?
Read MoreI was 12 years old when my dad first signed me up for canoe school. That involved an intense weekend of whitewater paddling on the beautiful Mulberry River in northwest Arkansas.
Read MoreDoctors and their families live the glamourous life, yes?
Read MoreSomeone recently told me that she never would have guessed that I had experienced any struggles in my medical marriage. Say what?!
Read MoreI haven’t quite gotten used to night float. I end up staying up late into the wee hours of the night, waiting for Lu to return home. The flickering of the lights, the movement of my hair out of the corner of my eye, tricks me into thinking she’s here.
Read MoreIt was about two weeks after we were married, I packed up what remaining possessions I had left at my parents and at a small storage unit I was renting to move with my husband to a new state as he started medical school.
Read MoreBeing married to someone with a demanding and powerful career has potential to have an unfortunate impact on the psyche of the spouse. In my case, I’m married to an Orthopedic Surgeon, and he’s killin’ it in his career.
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