“Breakout Opportunity” Brings Country Doctor Back into a “State of Permanent Beta”

My happiest times in medicine have been times of change. I loved being a medical student and a resident. I loved being Medical Director in Bucksport, Maine, where I designed the logo, wrote the patient newsletter, mentored nurse practitioner students and new clinicians, did staff education and introduced walk-in services, helped design a massive building expansion, helped start a Suboxone program, formalized bidirectional handoffs between primary care and mental health and helped bring about many other changes. We were always changing, never resting on our laurels. I led by example, working every Saturday for several years to get the Saturday walk-in service going.

As a foreigner I had heard the word linchpin now and then, but never bothered to learn what it meant. Yesterday I learned it is the little pin that keeps my lawnmower wheels from falling off.

It is also a worker whose efforts hold things together, even though it may not be obvious how indispensable their function is. Seth Godin has written a book titled Linchpin, maybe I’ll check it out. It sounds like for a while I was a little bit like that in Bucksport, but they have obviously survived without me.