Dr. Whitcomb, who is medical director of healthcare quality at Baystate Medical Center in Springfield, Mass., and Dr. Wark married 15 years ago and have worked to configure their relationship to accommodate both career and family. “For most of our relationship,” she explains, “I’ve had a part-time job that has stayed steady.”
Dr. Wark’s professional flexibility allows her to function as a full-time mother to their two children, Maela, 13, and Nicholas, 10. “Although my career has been very successful, Win has been more the one who has undergone career changes and advancements,” she says. “My staying steady has allowed that space in our relationship.”
Drs. Fang and Sharpe haven’t had to cross the bridge of different job offerings yet. But Dr. Sharpe asserts that he’s a firm believer that there should be no difference in how their careers are valued. The couple has an ongoing “transparent conversation,” adds Dr. Fang, about what’s important to each of them and the relative impact of future opportunities. In addition, her job as a researcher is somewhat portable, so the chances of simultaneous job offers might increase. For now, though, they are happily committed to UCSF and love the city of San Francisco.
Madhavi Dandu, MD, MPH, assistant clinical professor and associate director of Pathways to Discovery in Global Health at UCSF, and her husband, Nima Afshar, MD, an ED/hospitalist at UCSF and at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in San Francisco, have been lucky, she says, because “we were both drawn to medicine for similar reasons.” Together since their second year of medical school, they also both wanted, early on, to pursue careers in academic medicine. “We definitely went through some difficult times, but mostly, we were on the same page,” Dr. Dandu says.
When it came time to apply to a match program for residency, they both applied to UCSF, where they successfully completed their residencies and began their academic careers. They made a conscious decision to wait to have children until their training was finished.
Liz and Jasen Gunderson
Still, in the first year or so after their daughter’s birth in 2008, Dr. Dandu felt the pull between career and parenthood. “As a physician, you’re driven to make sure you’re not dropping the ball on anything, and there were many weekends that I was away from my daughter,” she says.
A supportive family helped with a flexible childcare arrangement, but this past year, Dr. Dandu decided to scale back her work schedule to 80% of regular shifts in order to spend more time with her daughter. Now, she says, “It’s pretty rare” that she will alter a commitment with her daughter for last-minute calls from work.
Shared and Diverse Interests
Even if they work in the same division, dual-hospitalist couples say they thrive when they also have independent career interests. David O. Meltzer, MD, PhD, FHM, chief of the Division of Hospital Medicine at the University of Chicago’s Department of Medicine and director of the Center for Health and the Social Sciences in Chicago, and his wife, Vineet Arora, MD, MPP, SFHM, assistant dean of Pritzker School of Medicine in Chicago and associate program director of the internal-medicine residency program, pursue independent spheres in addition to occasional collaborations as hospitalist-researchers.