A doctor has shared his reasons for leaving his medical career to immerse himself in the mountains.
‘Dr Goobie’ – an alias, not his real name – was a neurosurgeon with a background from the esteemed Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
After a decade as a neurosurgeon, he decided to abandon his career and pursue a different path.
Using the pseudonym Goobie on YouTube under the channel name Goobie and Doobie, he discussed his long-standing interest in the brain and consciousness.
When Goobie started his first job, he felt something was off. Despite good pay, support, and colleagues, he was deeply unhappy.
“I was the most unhappy that I’ve ever been and I couldn’t figure it out for a long time,” he said.
He also mentioned that he had just married his wife before starting the job, and even though she tried to help him understand his feelings, he couldn’t pinpoint the cause of his dissatisfaction.
In his daily work, Goobie mainly performed spinal surgeries on patients with back pain.
“It’s like you have a house and the roof, the top of your house has a leak somewhere & rainwater is coming down into the house, ruining the drywall,” he explained.
Despite helping many people, Goobie said there were significantly more patients he couldn’t assist.
Upon reflecting on his unhappiness, Goobie realized that most of his surgeries did not solve the patients’ problems.
“What I was doing, was doing the surgeries I knew how to do, but they weren’t fixing the problem,” he explained.
Goobie discovered that factors such as diet, sleep, and exercise were far more crucial.
However, he noted that the hospital system isn’t always set up to fully support patients’ recovery.
“The way things are set up is that the hospital needs to make money; they need to make money. They need to grow economically,” he said.
“The problem there is that if you figure out a way to help patients heal and that in that way doesn’t include a pill or surgery well then the hospital and the doctor are in big trouble.
“Because if you figure out a way to help people heal and you can’t charge them for it well then you’ve just worked yourself out of a job.”
Goobie continued: “I still did surgery but I really felt like the focus of medicine wasn’t in the right place. It wasn’t in healing it was in making money from surgeries and pills.
“I’m not knocking any particular place that I work. I work for very good hospitals, and people have good intentions, but the incentives are not right in the whole system.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25LUF8GmbFU
After this epiphany, Goobie decided to leave his job permanently.
“The incentives were not right. Once I figured out what was going on it was a huge problem for me ethically,” he said.
“I was doing a job I didn’t believe in anymore. When you let go of something that you’re holding too tightly, even though it’s hurting you, and you let go of it, then you’re able to pick up something else that hopefully is better for you.”
Now, Dr Goobie spends much of his time in nature with his dog, Doobie, capturing their hikes and adventures to share with his followers.
“I wanted to spend time outside, help my dog live a full life and record those moments so that if I live longer than Doobie, I can look back on them,” he said.
“I’m able to be outside and be healthier, I’ve figured out a way I can help relieve people’s suffering, by sharing nature scenes with them.”