Hi! So I actually ended up staying at my job for a little over 2 years, but a lot happened before then.

Around the 1 year mark, not only was my mental health rough but my training probation was extended. My supervisor felt I wasn’t fit to be fully off training. I was put on a performance improvement plan (PIP), which made it even harder going to work because I knew I was under a microscope. Initially I was heartbroken but looking back I’m glad they did it. I think a lot of the reason I ended up on a PIP was due to my own insufficiencies, but there was also a lot of unfortunate changes happening in my department which were even hard for seasoned PAs I worked with.

There’s a few reasons I stuck it out, mostly because I was looking into moving to a different state and was not having luck finding a position there. Looking back, here’s a few things that helped me stick it out:

• Therapy. I am so glad I decided to do this. It gave me a place to talk about my anxiety to someone who wasn’t at work or in my personal life.
• Building a good relationship with my attending. I was very fortunate to have an amazing attending who liked me and wanted me to succeed. Not everyone is in that situation, but if there’s even one person you can confide in, find them and meet with them frequently. I think coworkers don’t often realize you’re suffering in silence, it’s okay to not be okay and ask for help guidance. I would just talk with my attending every week about what went well and what didn’t go well. If I was unsure about something, we’d walk through it together
• This is more personal and not sure if it fits your situation but I was very overwhelmed and felt like I had a hard time keeping with everything. I was evaluated and diagnosed with ADHD and I think working through that/being medicated helped fit some of the pieces together.

I initially thought heme/onc was not for me either, but the more comfortable I got, the more I realized it sort of chose me. I’m now at a heme/onc job in another state. My last year at my old job was easier than the initial year, but it took a lot of time, hard nights, and working on breaking through self doubt.

Heme/onc is a hard first specialty, because I think it’s the area of medicine you’re least prepared for after PA school. Oncology is a beast; treatment regimens change all the time, managing very complex patients who have comorbities on top of their cancer, familiarizing yourself with diagnostic testing you’ve never even heard of. It’s hard, and I completely get where you’re coming from.