Dr. Robyn Alley-Hay

What inspired you to be a doctor? And what was your favorite part?

¨Well, I was going to be a veterinarian. In fact, I did an internship in veterinary medicine, and then I got kinda freaked out by the guys from the farms and the large animals… I was a city girl. And to be truthful, it was between nursing and being a doctor. So I don’t know if I have the typical story, I mean, there were things that I cared about and I really wanted to contribute. That’s what drove me. I knew going into medical school that I wanted to be an Ob/Gyn. I knew that I wanted to do things for women, and I was just so fascinated with the biology and physiology of pregnancy. Like, how does that happen? We still don’t have all the answers necessarily, you know. From two little cells meeting a whole baby is formed, isn’t that just the coolest thing ever? If it was legal, I probably would have been a nurse midwife, actually. At the time (and this is making me so old) but at the time it wasn’t legal to be a nurse midwife in Kansas. That has certainly changed.

What did I… What was my favorite part? Gosh, there’s so many favorite parts. I loved my job. I have to say, delivering babies was really… To me, it was sacred time, sacred space, and I was there to just assist. There are some beautiful, beautiful births. It’s just a miracle seeing a baby being born. The other favorite part is probably the surgery part. I really enjoyed doing surgery. I didn’t enjoy taking out pieces and parts (except to make people feel better) but I really enjoyed the technical part of doing surgery. It’s just so amazing to get to see a live human being. So there’s a lot of awe I’ve had in my practice. Just awe- of how everything work.

What was one thing you wished someone told you before you became a doctor?

“I wish someone told me about the hours, and just the grind of it. You know, it sounds all so cool, and it is really cool, but there’s a lot of medicine that’s just a grind, you know? Where you show up every day, you see patients at the clinic every day, this is one of the ways that it’s changed, you know, now care for the patient is more… You have someone in clinic practice, and then you have a hospitalist, so it’s more fragmented, I guess. But, just the girnd part that’s just not that much fun. Gosh, there’s a lot of things. I wish someone had told me not to listen to that, you know that inner voice you have that’s probably evaluating me right now like “What’s she saying? Rada dada da” or yourself like “oh my gosh, I’m on video camera. Do I look okay? How’s my hair? Oh, I don’t want to look at myself”.You know, that whole voice that’s running. You guys know what I’m talking about? Raise your hand if you know what I’m talking about. Okay. All of you do. So, that voice, it can talk you out of a lot of things. It can talk you out of being a leader. It can talk you out of raising your hand. It can talk you out of being bold. It can talk you out of sticking up for yourself. So I wish, somebody had taught me about that, and taught me how worry is a protector but it’s not, like, I worry too much about things. So there’s some wisdom things that I wish I would have known ahead of time, but mostly that voice. For whatever reason, I would keep myself down, and you have to honor that voice because it’s trying to protect you. At the same time it’s like, ‘nye nye nye nye’ and we can choose whether to listen to that or not. I wish I wouldn’t have listened to that as much as I did.

Have you experienced any discrimination as a female doctor?

“As a medical student, when it came to having children? There were no accomodations. None. I had a pregnancy, I was about 12 weeks, and I kept throwing up and I was on neurosurgery. You had to wake up at 5 am to make the rounds before the resident arrived and then you’re in neurosurgery, you had these long cases ‘till sometimes 10-11 o’clock at night. I just physically couldn’t do it. I was throwing up in the snowbanks. I knew where every bathroom in case I needed to throw up. I couldn’t maintain that. So I went to the Dean, and they were like ‘Oh, okay. But you’ll have to take the whole year off.’ That’s what I ended up doing. There was just no accommodations for women and reproduction. After medical school, I went and applied for residency positions. One place I was asked if they could offer me a tubal ligation. And my answer was ‘Well, you could talk to my husband about a vasectomy, I guess’. At another place, they actually opened my file and said ‘You have two kids’, closed it and said ‘You’re wasting your time.’ And that was the end of that. You guys are probably asking yourselves ‘Does that happen?’ and I hope it’s better, and I hope as we see women rise up in the ranks (which they’re doing) we won’t see that… I wish I could tell you that we made it a whole ton better and that nothing like that happens anymore, but there is still some of that… It might not be as obvious, although… Someone I know who went into residency 10 years ago had a similar experience with the ‘We’re not interested because you have children’ conversation. So that’s getting better, but it’s way behind to what you would see in the business world. What you do about is, don’t listen to that voice, don’t listen to their voice, and become resilient, and you find allies in medicine.

You are part of a group for Physicians who are moms and you were an educator there. How did you balance your personal and professional lives and what sacrifices did you have to make in each of them?

"I took off a year with my second baby as well because I just wanted to spend time. My husband was going into medicine too, so I was like ‘You might as well catch up with me a little bit’. But… These are big questions. I guess any doctor sacrifices time with the family, particularly in training, particularly as a resident. I mean, medical school is hard, right? There’s a big demand for you to learn so much, but residency is really… you do sacrifice. I always joke and say ‘I miss the late eighties and the early nineties’ because I was so focused on what I was doing. So, it’s mostly the time… You know, the moms right now? Who show up in the ER and are separated from their kids because they’re afraid that they’re going to take the virus back to their families. It’s the same thing with male doctors, too. Of course they’re stepping up and helping their patients, and they’re also teaching their kids at home, it’s the same as other professions but in these kinds of situations there’s an added risk of putting your life on the line, basically.

*At this point my phone ran out of storage and stopped the voice recording, but another really great point that was brought up afterwards is that you don’t have to have your life figured out when you’re 18. You don’t have to study biology or go into pre med to become a doctor. It’s okay to be undecided, just explore different options and see if they are for you.