The Summer I Turned Still: A Dermatology PA's Reflection on a Year Away

Last summer, after 17 years as a PA, I stepped away from clinical practice. I never imagined that I would need, or want, to take a break. What I expected to feel was rest. What I found instead was recovery.

For over a decade I had run full steam. Four clinic days a week. Evening pharmaceutical speaker programs. Weekend advisory boards all over the country. More than 20 additional hours each week leading the PA and NP initiatives for one of the largest dermatology educational companies in the country. Conferences several times a month. Executive and Medical Board roles. Underneath all of it were 2 active boys, ages 4 and 13; a husband of 17 years coaching high school football; aging parents; a household; and friendships that too often lived inside a group chat. I was managing. Barely. But the weight of it all had started settling somewhere deep in my chest.

Then the clinic I had recently joined closed without notice. I had 2 choices: find another position immediately or read the moment for what it was. I read it.

“What are you doing making dinner? You don’t cook.”

It was early in my sabbatical, and my 13‑year‑old had just walked through the door. He wasn’t being unkind. He was being honest. In that small kitchen moment, I understood something I had spent a decade outrunning: my absence had been measurable. My presence, even more so. Whatever doubt I still carried about stepping away dissolved.

The first 2 months surprised me. I had assumed that once the schedule lifted, I would feel rested almost immediately. Instead, it took months for my nervous system to settle, for the low‑grade hum of vigilance I had carried for years to finally quiet. Recognizing that was its own kind of evidence. If my body needed that long to return to any version of a baseline, the deficit had been deeper than I knew.

Burnout among women in medicine is not anecdote; it is epidemiology. The most recent American Medical Association data show that 47.2% of women physicians reported at least one burnout symptom in 2024, compared with 38.9% of men.¹ Women clinicians carry disproportionately heavier domestic loads, higher in‑basket message volumes, and report lower satisfaction with work–life integration than male colleagues at every career stage.² Even in dermatology, often cited as one of the “happier” specialties, roughly 38% of providers report at least one symptom of burnout, and the rate is climbing.³ I was simply a data point.

Stepping back did not mean standing still. It meant moving differently, deliberately, and toward the things I had long postponed. I packed lunches and perfected French toast. I picked my older son up from school for the first time in his life. I rode scooters with my youngest and practiced jump shots in the driveway with my oldest. I learned to needlepoint, took hot pilates classes, learned to shoot guns with my dad, walked until dark more nights than I can count, and read books that had nothing to do with medicine. I caught up on every physical and mental health appointment I had deferred for years. I slept in with my 4‑year‑old, who has started calling me “my best girl,” a phrase I will carry with me until I die.

I still spoke. I still consulted. But less, and only what I chose. I learned to say no, which is the hardest word in the vocabulary of a people‑pleaser. I learned that laundry can wait, that a perfectly run house is not the same as a well‑loved one, and that my children do not need a perfect mother — they need a present one. A healthy one. A happy one. Turns out, research supports what I had begun feeling: extended leave has been shown to reduce stress and return workers to their roles with greater psychological resources than peers who never stepped away.⁴

I had always measured my worth by output. Stillness, I’ve learned, has value too.

This summer I return to clinic 3 days a week, with a capped speaking and travel calendar and a non‑negotiable commitment to protecting time for my family and myself. The balance will not be perfect. Some seasons will demand more of one role than another, and I have learned to give myself grace through those shifts. Ambition and motherhood are not mutually exclusive, but both ask something of us. I am learning to be more thoughtful about what gets the most and best of me.

Stepping back is not the opposite of ambition — it is often what allows it to last.The problem was never having both. It was the order. I am not less driven than I was a year ago. I have simply learned where my limits are and stopped taking out loans against the rest of my life.

References

1. American Medical Association. How health systems can reduce the gender gap in physician burnout. AMA Prac Man. September 23, 2025. Accessed May 15, 2026. https://www.ama-assn.org/practice-management/physician-health/how-health-systems-can-reduce-gender-gap-physician-burnout
2. Templeton K, Bernstein CA, Deas D, et al. Gender-based differences in burnout: issues faced by women physicians. NAM Perspectives. National Academy of Medicine; 2019. doi:10.31478/201905a
3. Colon A, Gillihan R, Motaparthi K. Factors contributing to burnout in dermatologists. Clin Dermatol. 2020;38(3):321-327. doi: 10.1016/j.clindermatol.2020.02.002
4. Davidson OB, Eden D, Westman M, et al. Sabbatical leave: who gains and how much? J Appl Psychol. 2010;95(5):953-964. doi:10.1037/a0020068