Maria and Chris are from a double doctor family—Chris’s specialty is intensive care and anaesthesia (dual fellowship) and Maria is in Public Health Medicine. They live in Wellington and have three children aged 11 months, two years, and four years.

• How do your specialties fit in with your family?
  C: Training years have been pretty demanding. I’ve been lucky that Maria has been full-time at home to look after the kids. I’ve just finished my last night shift ever and the shift work would have been so much harder with two working parents. I feel like I’ve been a pretty good dad but at the expense of everything else—I have only had room for medicine and parenting during these training years.
  M: Public health does have part time training (minimum 0.4 FTE) and of course the hours are great—no nights, and no shift work! I chose to spend a block of time (five years) at home having kids before returning, to avoid the to-ing and fro-ing of intermittent maternity leave. At the time I had my eldest child, there was no formal provision for maternity leave—I had to have ‘special leave’ approved, and then I ended up having to resign from the training scheme in order to have more than 12 months’ leave. I was approved for re-entry into the scheme in 2012.
• How have you fitted in training since finishing medical school?
  C: I put my head down and got to the end of it—almost as fast as possible for a dual trainee. This meant no locums, and only one three month stint in Europe travelling. Once we decided to have kids, the pressure was on to finish because Maria was putting her career on hold until I had finished training.
  M: I also chose my specialty early, and got onto the training scheme after PGY2. I finished my last MPH exam four days before our first child was born, and then completed my dissertation after she was born (which was tough with sleep deprivation and baby brain). Since I’ve been off work, I’ve tried to get to training days when possible, but this has been relatively hard.
• Do you have any advice for doctors-in-training who are thinking about balancing a career and kids?
  There is no perfect time, so figure out your priorities and go from there. To patients, you are one doctor, but to your family, you are the only mum/dad. Be prepared to compromise on everything but look towards finding a balance that you can live with. Have a plan and figure out what’s possible—make sure you are in touch with MCNZ and your college etc.
  M: Lots of people have told me you can’t have five years out of medicine, and it is true that I’ll have extra supervision when I go back to work, but I was going to be supervised as a registrar anyway so that wasn’t a big issue for me.
• How has a medical career affected your family?
  C: Shift work and exams are both hard on families. Exam study means life is pretty much work, study and squeezing in some time with the kids. Shift work is hard when the kids have a grumpy, tired dad or a dad working weekends a lot. My demands from work have put a lot of added home demands on Maria and strained our relationship at times.
  M: I think if I wasn’t a doctor I wouldn’t go back to work until the youngest was three or four years old, so I guess I have compromised on that somewhat. There are positive aspects though—it’s nice having secure job prospects.
• What support do you get from your family?
  C: We moved to Wellington to be near Maria’s parents. They see the kids a few times a week but we don’t have any formal child care arrangement.
  M: It was really useful to have family around when Chris was studying and working weekends, because those are the loneliest times as a ‘solo’ parent. When we are both working, we will try to structure it so my mum is ‘back-up’ one day a week, in case of nanny illness.
• How did you find the support from your college?
  C: As a member of two colleges, I have felt that my trainee years have been more about meeting their demands rather than having their support. I have not sought any different treatment or deviation from the standard trainee model.
  M: In the last few years the College has changed to have formal maternity leave (one year per child), and has also decreased the minimum requirement from 0.5 FTE to 0.4 FTE—both are really helpful and if they had been options for me then, I would probably have taken them rather than having a big block of time away from working.
• What, if any, problems did you encounter when returning to training?
  M: I kept the College informed of my (changing) plans, so re-joining the scheme was relatively straight forward. I have found finding referees for my CV difficult because basic public health training is academic so there wasn’t an employment relationship—something that an explanation can fix, but it does feel like I am making excuses. I am currently in the process of reapplying for my APC, which will have some conditions attached to it, and which takes a bit of paperwork.
• How did you/Did you maintain CME while on maternity leave?
  M: I joined the NZMA DiTC and subsequently Board because it was a good way for me to keep up with things like policy changes. I regularly read a couple of journals, plus other important articles that I become aware of, but I am sure there are gaps because I don’t have the employment relationships to hear about things (or time to spend reading). I have been to a few conferences/meeting days, and some informal study group meetings—all at personal expense. I belong to several different interest/professional groups so that I get email traffic relating to public health.
• If you were just graduating from medical school again, what would you do differently?
  M: I’m pretty happy with how we’ve done things—we have stayed true to our priorities. I look around lots of colleagues and see a lot who are ‘owned’ by their training scheme and who wonder if/when they will have the kids that they say they want to have.
  C: I’m happy with where we are now and looking back pleased that we have persisted with our plans and priorities as a family. There have been some dark years (particularly those postgrad exam years), and constant re-evaluation of what we are doing and where we want to go, but overall I am happy with the choices we have made.